


Burn this Town to the Ground

by vailkagami



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Depression, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Torture, implied suicidal thoughts, post-Vegas, references to murder, refernces to rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:22:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 62,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vailkagami/pseuds/vailkagami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post COTW: Ray Vecchio never left Chicago and Fraser returned from Canada when he realized that after Vegas his friend might need his help. And Ray does need his help, but that doesn't mean he's willing to accept it. But then, he's never been able to deny Fraser anything for long. And Fraser has never stepped back from a challenge, but Ray is more badly damaged than he anticipated and there may not be enough time for them to fix everything. Or anything at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nizah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nizah/gifts).



> Fortunately, my assignment left me a lot of freedom, which is good because ideas tend to kind of run wild once I start writing. So somehow this turned long again. I hope that's not too much of an inconvenience.  
> I did not manage to include all the wishes listed in the assignment. I tried, but the characters refused to go there. I did avoid the listed triggers, though, of course.  
> Altogether, I'm not sure how I feel about this story. I really tried and I hope you like it, but I'm afraid it sucks anyway. It's probably too long, in any case.  
> I'm eternally grateful to my wonderful beta [asu-a](http://archiveofourown.org/users/asu_a/profile) for saving this story from being even worse - and even longer.  
> The title doesn't really make sense. I had a reason for choosing it, but it's a rather obscure one.

When Ray was a little boy, he was convinced that all fathers beat their children. He went to school and he knew in his heart that all the other kids around him were hiding bruises under their clothes like he was. And, sure, he wasn’t supposed to talk about it to anyone, but they weren’t supposed to talk about farting either, and everyone did that. Adults had sex, he knew that was where kids came from in the first place, but no one ever talked about it.

When he was six years old, he didn’t see a flaw in his logic.

By the time he was eight, he had seen and heard enough to think that maybe it was just all fathers in _his_ family who beat their kids. He knew his granddad had beaten his pop, because Pop sometimes mentioned it, when fighting with Ma: How his father had knocked him around and it hadn’t done him any harm, and besides, how else was his sissy of a son going to learn how to be a real man? And Ray knew then that this was something that was passed on like heirloom, like the green eyes that ran in his family. His uncle Nico beat his wife and kids, too, and one day, when Ray had kids of his own, he would do so as well.

He was nine years old when the knowledge crashed over him like a collapsing building. He’d been sitting in the room he shared with his brother Fredo one night, listening with one ear to the little boy’s peaceful breathing and with the other to their mother crying below, while cradling a broken wrist he would tell everyone he had gotten falling off his bike. And right then, when his father shouted out his wisdom about the family curse (not that he called it that, he called it the only way to raise a child), Ray had known without a doubt that this was what lay waiting in his future.

The thought tortured him much worse than his broken arm or black eye, but even though he felt like he was going to throw up at the realization, at that moment it seemed inevitable. It was the same moment he decided that he would never have kids.

Years later, when he tried to explain to Ange why he didn’t want a baby she had laughed, and then she’d gotten angry. And Ray could never make her understand that he _knew_ his views were ridiculous and that that knowledge changed nothing because the thought of one day being like his father was still the kit that held his skeleton together.  By that time Fredo had a restraining order keeping him from the ex-wife he’d put in the hospital and all Ray could see when he imagined himself with children of his own was the kids doing something wrong and Ray beating it out of them like Pop had done with him. The very idea still filled him with mind numbing horror, but who could guarantee that he wouldn’t? Freddy hadn’t wanted to be that guy, either.

Sometimes, Ray still wishes he was as brave as Maria. She is the oldest, she had gotten almost as much attention from their father as he had, and yet she has kids and never lifts a hand to them, nor would she tolerate any man who did. Frannie is the same: constantly arguing with her nieces and nephews and constantly keeping an eye out for anyone who might harm them. Maybe the women in his family are protective where the men are bastards.

Either way, none of them can deny where they came from. Ray is sure his sisters don’t even notice, but he’s seen them stand in front of the kids whenever there was a stranger around, or someone they didn’t trust, or someone who was angry, or drunk. He’s seen them get hostile or tense when uncle Nico came too close to any of his brother’s grandkids, and he’s seen them instinctively shield Maria’s first baby from Freddy when he was in one of his moods, back when he was still living with them and had never yet hurt anyone.

They have never shown that reaction towards Ray. For all they fight over the dinner table, somehow Ray registers as safe on their maternal radar even when he is angry, like something in them knows he would never hurt a child, and that knowledge, that instinctive trust has always put his mind at ease in some way, like an unspoken certification that maybe, despite the odds, he might not be a monster.

And that is why, when the kids’ yelling suddenly stops at his interruption and everyone goes quiet and Maria is inching in front of her daughter while Ma stares at him with that _look_ on her face, he knows without a doubt that it is time for him to move out.

 

-

 

 

-

 

Ray knocks on Benton’s door about an hour before midnight. He comes in with a small bag and a small smile and says, “I’m sorry, I know you’re usually asleep by now,” and then he says, “Can I bunk with you? It’s only for one night,” before Benton even has a chance to assure him he was still awake.

“Of course,” he replies. “Stay as long as you want.”

Ray isn’t even looking at him anymore as he shakes his head. He looks around, that little smile still on his lips, but his eyes are going for the window, assessing the line to the door, finding the open doorway to the kitchen and the darkness on the other side. “I see you really upgraded since your stay in your office,” he teases, light and familiar and his shoulders are a tense line beneath his too wide shirt. He’s playing a role.

“I don’t have a bed,” Benton tells him, apologetic. Ray looks over at his cot and his smirk grows. “Seriously, Benny, tell me exactly how this is an improvement? At least in the consulate you had a bathroom mostly for yourself.”

“It’s only temporary,” Benton points out, then nearly flinches. He watches his friend closely, but Ray doesn’t react to the reminder at all, as if it had no meaning. Benton moves out of the way to allow the other man access to the cot, feeling vaguely disoriented and lost.

Ray shakes his head at him and walks over to the kitchen. Benton sees his friend’s hand shake and wonders if he should say something but decides against it. “I didn’t come to chase you out of your bed. I just need to hang out somewhere until morning. Would stay in the car but it’s too freaking cold tonight. Wow, this isn’t a kitchen. This is a closet with an oven.”

“Don’t be unfair, Ray. There is a sink and a hot plate as well.”

“Yes, one. Singular. One hot plate.”

“And Diefenbaker.”

“I noticed.” Ray is indeed looking down at Dief who is sniffing his hand and buts it with his head, demanding to be petted. After a second Ray does so, then he withdraws his hand, his fingers curling into a loose fist. At no point does he complain about wolf hair on his clothes. Maybe he has forgotten about that part of the performance. “I didn’t think you could find a place less appealing than your home on Racine, but here we are.”

“It used to be Turnbull’s,” Benton explains. “He thought it was too big for him. Fortunately, it was still empty when I needed a place to stay.”

Ray is still smiling when he turns around, but it looks vacant, like his mind is far away. “Turnbull is the only Canadian stranger than you. He could barely even stretch out in this place. I don’t get him.”

“I’m not sure there is much to get,” Benton offers. But Ray shakes his head.

“There must be.” And there is a little frown between his brows, as if this were troubling him. As if Turnbull was an enigma that was terribly important all of a sudden, and Benton thinks that for far too long Ray’s survival had depended on understanding other people’s motives, on figuring out how they ticked. Taking that into consideration, Constable Turnbull might be more than he can take.

“Maybe he just didn’t like it,” Benton tries to help. “You don’t like it either.”

“You’re right, this is terrible. If you fall over by the door you’re gonna hit your head on the opposite wall. Why didn’t you come stay with my family? You know Ma’s always happy to have you.”

“You’re not staying with your family either,” Benton points out. “Ray, what happened?”

“Nothing big. I decided I needed a change of scenery.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“It’s not that late, you just go to bed freakishly early.”

“It’s close to midnight.”

“So? Oh.” The expression of surprise comes delayed, but still seems sincere. Maybe Ray really didn’t realize how late it was, but that still doesn’t make any sense. “I may have stayed in the car for a while.”

Benton sighs. Ray is still holding the bag – it’s too small to contain any clothes or blankets or other things a person would take when they moved out of a house. He knows what it is; it’s a bag with a toothbrush, a razor and a clean pair of socks and underwear that Ray keeps in the trunk of his car in case something comes up unexpectedly and forces him to stay out all night. He used to need it a lot during Benton’s time in Chicago, but his old bag went up in flames with his old car and Ray hasn’t actively worked as an officer of the law since he returned from Las Vegas. There is no work-related reason for him to have replaced the bag.

But he did, and now he’s standing in Benton’s kitchen looking like he regrets coming here.

“You look tired,” Benton tells him and straightens the covers on the cot to makes them look more appealing.

Ray watches and makes no move to come closer. Instead, he places his bag on the tiny table in the kitchen. “I’m not going to take your bed, Benny.”

“I will sleep on the floor. You know I don’t mind that.”

“And you know your body does mind it a lot ever since I shot you in the back.” Ray says the words unflinchingly, his eyes firm on Benton’s face, his expression unchanged, like he made a remark about the weather. Benton does flinch; he can’t help himself.

“Ray,” he says.

“I don’t sleep,” Ray tells him. “No point in giving up your bed for me.”

Benton sits down on the edge of the cot and forces himself to look at the man in his kitchen. “What happened?” he asks again, his voice quiet.

Ray sits too, on the single kitchen chair at the other end of the world. He shrugs. “I invited Langoustini for an evening with the family.”

Benton doesn’t dare to move. “What do you mean?”

“I mean the kids were fighting over something. The remote, I think. I wanted to be upstairs but Ma wanted me to stay, she thinks I’m too isolated.” He snorts softly, his gaze finally leaving Benton to drift into the distance and he looks a little like Ray again. “You know how she is.”

“And the kids were bothering you,” Benton suggests when Ray doesn’t continue.

The other’s lips twitch into something that might have been a smile had it appeared on a face that remembered how to form one. “Yeah. I don’t know why. It’s not like there were any kids around Armando, you know? But it was freaking me out. I thought I was going to lose it right there, and I thought, that I needed to get out before I did, but Frannie and Maria were discussing something in the doorway and I just...” He shrugs again. “I don’t know.”

“You felt trapped,” Benton offers.

“Aw, Benny.” Ray’s expression almost looks like a grin now, an embarrassed one. He does look like Ray now, all of a sudden, and Benton wishes he weren’t that far away. “A grown man doesn’t feel trapped between playing kids and his sisters.”

“But you couldn’t leave.”

“Yeah. No. I mean, I could have, but…” Ray looks down, his expression still carefully relaxed, but now Benton can see the mask. “It just didn’t seem like an option. So I told them to shut up.”

“And?”

“And nothing. Then I left.”

Benton blinks, confused. He expected more. He also feels relief wash though him, shamefully, because he expected more. “You told your nephews and nieces to shut up before.”

“Yeah, but not like this.”

“Did you yell?”

“I yell all the time. No. It was just...” Ray sits perfectly still and Benton keeps silent, sensing that his friend will never finish that sentence if Benton reminds him he is in the room. But Ray looks at him when he finally speaks. “Armando had this way of talking to people, you know? This way that said he could, and would, do terrible things to them and everyone they loved if they didn’t do as he wished. And they… Ma had that look on her face. She used to look like that when my father was drunk and she did something that pissed him off. I once promised myself that I would kill anyone who ever made her look like that again.”

“Oh Ray,” Benton sighs. He stands, but Ray stands at the same time, walking the two steps to the window and looking out. His back is turned and his shoulders are stiff and Benton knows he would leave if getting to the door wouldn’t bring him too close to the other man. So Benton stands beside the cot, his arms hanging uselessly by his side. “I’m sure they understand.”

“Yeah.” Ray says softly. “They don’t.”

“If you explain–”

“That’s not it. They don’t get that it’ll happen again. And it will. And it could be worse next time. I can’t be anywhere near them. Nor you.”

“I know you wouldn’t hurt me, Ray. I know you wouldn’t hurt your family either.”

“Yeah? You know more than me, then. But that’s not even it. I just need some time to pull my shit together.”

Ray’s voice is flat, but Benton can see his fingers twitch. He wonders, suddenly, if Ray is ‘freaking out’ again, if being here and talking to his friend is that bad. He probably wishes he hadn’t come.

His tone is completely casual and something about that is frightening.

“Don’t leave,” Benton says before he can stop himself. Ray kind of jerks, but doesn’t turn around or say anything. “It’s cold. Where would you go if you won’t go home?”

“I could stay in the car.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s too cold, you said so yourself.” Benton’s mouth is speaking and his hands are moving on autopilot when he takes the spare blanket out of the closet and places it on the kitchen table with steady, careful movements. Ray is standing too close to the window for Benton to see the reflection of his face in the glass. He only speaks when he is back in the other room. “Stay.”

After a long silence, Ray makes a soft sound like a laugh. “Yeah. Well. Go to sleep, Benny. I’ll be out of your hair in the morning.”

“It’s no bother. You can stay as long as you like.” Benton settles onto the cot, wishing he knew the man standing in his kitchen, knew how to handle him. (He wishes he remembered how to be so confident, so sure of what he was doing.) “Good night, Ray.”

Ray turns off the light in the kitchen and in the darkness, Benton listens to him move in the distance all night.

 

-

 

Benton sinks into restless slumber after all, some short hours before dawn. When he wakes up, Ray is mostly dressed and brushing his teeth at the kitchen sink. He hasn’t noticed Benton’s waking and looks less rigid as he washes quickly. Benton thinks of the building’s shared bathroom of this building and thinks that perhaps Ray’s urgency to leave here doesn’t have everything to do with him.

When Ray turns, Benton closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep. He listens quietly as his friend stands by the door for a long moment before he opens it and leaves without another word. When he is gone, Benton continues lying there, his eyes closed, feeling like he just lost a battle.

 

-

 

When Benton takes a taxi to the house of Ray’s family three days later, he already knows that he won’t find Ray there. What he hopes for is information.

Mrs. Vecchio opens the door with an expression on her face that confirms all his worries and adds more. For the first time ever, she seems disappointed to see him, though she hides it quickly.

There is no escaping being invited inside for tea. Benton thinks he chose wisely not to come at dinner time. “I was wondering if you could tell me where to find Ray,” he asks over his steaming cup of Earl Grey and her face is a mask of a friendly smile when she writes down the address.

“Someone at the station found it out for Francesca,” she says when she hands him the small piece of paper with the expression of a woman who has learned to smile with her lips and scream for help with her eyes, and for one moment Benton desperately, helplessly loves her and her whole family.

The apartment building he finds at the address she gave him is old and not well maintained. It’s in a part of the city that is just as old and badly maintained. With the pay from the undercover job Ray could afford better, even while covering the bills for his family’s home,. Benton climbs up the stairs to the fourth floor and imagines his friend doing the same, knowing the place at the end was lacking and not caring, because it was the first one he could get on such short notice.

There is no doorbell, so he knocks. There is no answer, so he knocks again. Calls out, “Ray, it’s me,” because the Ray Vecchio he remembers would never not open the door for him. He doesn’t even know if Ray is in. Chances are he’s not, or he isn’t going to answer after all. Benton knocks and waits. He used to stand motionless in front of the consulate for hours, and here there’s no wind, no rain, no tourists. Benton even has a suitcase to sit on, because Ray’s mother is as helpless as he is, but she gave him a suitcase full of clothes, and a warm coat, and a bag with the packed leftovers of three meals and send him on his way with a kiss to his cheek and the knowledge that neither of them is ever going to give up.

In the end he doesn’t even have to wait four minutes; only the cold knot in his stomach makes it seem longer. He lifts his hand to knock for perhaps the fifth time when the door opens and Ray blinks at him and the pale light in the corridor. His clothes are rumpled and his eyes are watering. Benton thinks about how Ray said he didn’t sleep and immediately feels guilty.

“I thought it was you,” Ray says when he makes room for Benton to come inside. “I wasn’t sure.”

For the first time Benton considers that a lot of mobsters would be very interested in finding out the true identity of the mole that sold out the Iguanas and what would happen if they ever did.

Ray’s hand is shaking badly when he closes the door; once again Benton pretends not to notice. “One of your co-workers found your new address for Francesca,” he says by way of explanation.

“Ex-co-workers,” Ray corrects him. The apartment is small, just this little dark room with an old couch, a build in kitchen no bigger than the one at Benton’s current place, and two doors, one of which doubtlessly leads to a bathroom. It’s clean, though. Cleaner than expected, and it smells of soap and polish, and Benton pictures his friend cleaning everything, floor to ceiling, during one of his sleepless nights. “Did you know they gave my old job to Kowalski? Well, let him keep it, more like it.” Ray throws aside the blanket that lay crumbled on the couch with a humourless laugh and flops down, his body all limbs. “What am I asking? Of course you know.”

Benton refuses to rise to the bait – if there even is a bait here. It says a lot that he can’t tell. He did know, in any case. “You did not want it back.”

“I wasn’t offered it back.” Ray doesn’t sound bitter. He is a shade in the twilight; Benton wants to open the blinds before the window and doesn’t dare. “You think I’m gonna run after criminals with a bullet in my lung? All they are ever gonna offer me is a desk job.”

There is a long moment of silence in which both of them just breathe. “I’m sorry, Ray.”

“For what?”

“You got shot because of me.”

“No, I got shot because I got in the way of a bullet.”

“That was meant for me. You got hurt protecting me. Again.”

“And you got hurt because I shot you,” Ray snaps. This time his voice isn’t calm and his face isn’t expressionless. He jumps up and walks backwards until the full length of the couch is between him and Benton. “Don’t turn this into a fucking guilt trip, Fraser. There was absolutely nothing you did to contribute to me being shot. You didn’t use me as a human shield, nor did you ask me to protect you, and you most certainly didn’t pull the trigger, so drop it.”

“How could I? You took a bullet for me, Ray. Two, bullets, to be exact. And one explosion. Contrary to what you may believe, that is not something people usually do.”

“Well, I wouldn’t do it either if my brain were fucking working in those situations. What is your goddamn point?” Ray’s eyes are narrowing to slits; even in the dim light falling in through the blinds Benton can see it. “You feel like you owe me. Is that it? Is that why you came back?”

Benton opens his mouth, wants to tell Ray that of course he owes him, owes him because Ray is his friend and being there for each other is something friends _do_ , but even as he draws breath to speak he knows that it would come out all wrong. So maybe it is for the best that Ray doesn’t even let him utter the first word.

“Because if that’s the case, you can drop the act. If you’re here because you feel you have to balance out some metaphorical scales, you can just grab your buddy and go back to Canada, because the scales are forever tripped in your favour.” Ray’s words are heated but his face is like ice and something about that contrast freezes Benton on the spot while Ray slowly walks closer. “You called us even when I took the first bullet for you, but we both know that’s bullshit. I could throw myself into a hundred bullets and it wouldn’t make up for being behind the trigger of the one that hit you.”

Benton would close his eyes if he remembered how, and he would do it for shame. He remembers what he said to his friend that day knowing he should have given comfort instead, should have eased the guilt Ray had shouldered with assurances of blamelessness and continued friendship. But he had been in pain and useless in a hospital bed and Victoria had been gone and for once he hadn’t found it in himself to be kind.

“It was an accident,” he says now, inadequately. “You didn’t mean to hit me. I got in the way of your bullet.”

“How can you be so sure?” Ray is calm now, like he wants to cover the whole room in ice. “How would you know I didn’t aim for you? Knowing what you were about to do, what it would cost me – only you could be so naïve.”

“You didn’t mean to,” Benton repeats with the absolute, unshakable knowledge that he is speaking the truth. “You’re not the kind of person capable of hurting a friend.”

And suddenly Ray is on him, like he’s been held back by an invisible rubber band that finally snapped. His body slams into Benton’s and slams him against the wall with his hands twisted around the lapels of Benton’s shirt and his breath in Benton’s face, and he says, “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

In the space between Ray’s body and the wall, in his chest behind his ribs, Benton feels his heartbeat thunder, so hard he thinks he must be shaking with it. He thinks Ray must feel it too, because Benton can feel Ray’s heartbeat where their bodies are touching. It’s there, in that narrow chest, and it’s just as fast and loud as Benton’s. But Ray’s hands are steady and his eyes bore into Benton’s without blinking or looking away but with something that looks a lot like hate.

Passion, Benton thinks, somewhere in the back of his mind. Despair.

Breathing has become so hard.

Their faces are inches apart. He feels they must run out of air in what little space there is between them, but he keeps breathing and Ray keeps breathing and Benton’s hands come up and close around wrists that are very thin against his large palms to pry long fingers away from his shirt.

He holds on, feels the tension of tendons and muscle beneath his skin. Ray doesn’t try to get free. Benton doesn’t push him away but holds him in place with his writs trapped in Benton’s firm grip and their chests touching and their faces inches apart, stealing each other’s air.

If they were to kiss now, Benton thinks, it would happen for all the wrong reasons.

“I never blamed you for shooting me,” he says, his voice so quiet and calm where it should at least have the decency to tremble. “Not for the injury. I resented you because it kept me from being with her.”

“I know,” Ray hisses, forces out between clenched teeth, and closes that last bit of space between them.

It’s not even a kiss. It is lips being pressed against lips the way Ray’s chest is pressed against Benton’s chest, close-mouthed and full of anger and a million other things that are wrong. Benton thinks that if he stuck out his tongue he would be able to taste them on Ray’s lips, but he doesn’t dare.

Then Ray pulls away and goes back to staring into Benton’s eyes, daring him to do something. Punch him, perhaps. What Benton wants to do is pull him into his arms and never let him go.

He has often wondered if Ray really thought Victoria had a gun, or if he had just wanted to shoot her. He has accepted that he will never find out, that maybe Ray doesn’t know the answer himself. Maybe Ray’s imagination had made up a gun to give him an excuse to kill her. Maybe it had been a genuine mistake. Either way, Benton thinks, it doesn’t matter, because he understands now. Because as he finally lets go of Ray’s wrists, as Ray lingers for a second longer before he steps away, he wants nothing more than to kill everyone who ever hurt this man.

Ray still looks at him like he’s waiting for something. His glare is still heated, but mostly he looks tired, exhausted. Benton wants to hold him and give all the comfort he can offer, but all he can say is, “I’m not leaving,” hoping Ray will accept at least that.

Ray continues to look at him, his eyes hooded. Then, suddenly, he laughs, and his whole body seems to sag. “I can’t even offer you anything to drink.”

Benton dares a smile. “Tap water will do.”

“I’m not sure I trust the tap water here.”

“What have you been drinking?”

“Tap water.”

Now Benton dares a chuckle, though it is subdued. “It can’t be that bad, then.” He waits while Ray, after shrugging like he doesn’t care, gets a glass out of the cupboard. He also takes the cup off the flat table by the couch and rinses it out before filling both with water, and Benton is left wondering if that glass and that cup are the only drinking vessels he has.

It would fit the rest of the place. Benton opens the blinds before the window to let in washed out daylight, but it doesn’t make the place look any more like Ray lives here. There is the couch, and the table, and a lamp on the ceiling. No TV, no radio. A pale square on the wall indicates where a bookshelf once stood. Benton has no hope that the bedroom looks any better.

He hopes that Ray goes out, that he doesn’t spend all day alone in here with nothing.

In the light, Ray looks even worse. Benton searches through his vocabulary, but the best word he comes up with is haggard. Hollow cheeks, his eyes red rimmed and bruised looking, but he’s clean shaven, strangely enough. Benton marvels at that fact until he remembers that Armando Langoustini had a moustache.

He takes the glass he’s handed and nods towards the bags he left by the door before the silence has a chance to become too laden with things they can’t say. (Benton has rarely found himself at a loss for words but something about all this renders him speechless.) “Your mother sent these.” And then, because he can’t help himself. “Your family is worried about you.”

Ray makes a vague gesture and doesn’t look at him. “Seems like they have the address now, in case they need me. I was going to call them.” It sounds insincere. “Don’t have a phone. You know how that is. Well, I guess you don’t,” he corrects himself. “I’m not going to make friends with my neighbours so they will let me use _their_ phone when I need it.”

“Nobody expects you to,” Benton says softly.

Ray is standing with one hand propped on the back of the couch, shoulder bony underneath the oversized sweater. His eyes blaze while the rest of him just looks tired. “Of course you expect me to, Benny. That is exactly the kind of thing you expect of people. Because _you_ do that, since you are freaking perfect, and you go through life thinking that everyone else must be perfect, too.”

“I’m nowhere near perfect, Ray. And I don’t expect others to be.”

“Yes, you do. You just don’t get that I’m not, you never did. I don’t sacrifice my life for someone else’s money, I don’t sacrifice my car for someone else’s life, and I don’t go and make friends with my neighbours, because I don’t give a fuck about my neighbours.”

Benton sips his water, tries not to tense up. Ray was right, the water does taste tepid. He is reasonably sure it’s not dangerous for anyone’s health. “I know, Ray.”

The look Ray gives him reminds Benton of the one Mrs. Vecchio had when he last saw her. Both are filled with that silent, forever unspoken plea for help. “I don’t give a fuck about you either.”

Benton doesn’t look away. “I know, Ray.”

Ray looks like he wants to cry. He’s still standing beside the couch, like he can’t even relax enough to sit down, and Benton doesn’t know where to start. He came to help his friend, but even a normal conversation seems to be beyond them at this point.

He ought to take care of Ray. Ray clearly needs someone to take care of him since he isn’t doing it himself and maybe isn’t even capable of doing it himself, but for Benton to do it for him, Ray has to _let_ him.

Silently, Benton assesses what his friend needs. Sleep, evidently, but that might be a problem. Benton doesn’t know if Ray is suffering from insomnia or consciously avoiding sleep because of the nightmares it brings. Maybe it’s both. In any case, it’s not something Benton can easily help him with.

Food. Ray has always been thin but now he looks gaunt. Benton is grateful for the boxes Mrs. Vecchio had him deliver, that this is something he can actually work on, right now.

Maybe Ray needs medication, too. He was shot and seriously wounded only a few weeks ago, and the thin line beside his mouth speaks of lingering pain. Benton will try to find out if there is anything Ray is supposed to take, or anything he _could_ take to ease his discomfort.

And Ray needs to not be alone. He needs someone to be there for him, and Benton can try, if nothing else.

“Do you have any food? I’m quite hungry.” It’s not true, but it’s better than a direct approach, he figures. Ray shifts a little, looking torn and suspicious. He looks, for a moment, like a mobster waiting for a hit. Then he nods towards the refrigerator.

The vague relief Benton felt at the realization that his friend at least has food in his apartment dies when he opens the tiny fridge and finds nothing inside but a half eaten box of Chinese take out. He eyes it for a moment, then closes the fridge and goes to collect the bag Ray’s mother gave him: Leftover of much better quality. “Your mother asked me to give you these. If you don’t mind, I’ll heat one up. What do you feel like, carbonara or casserole?”

“Why ask me? You’re the one who’s hungry.”

“True. But you know the size of your mother’s portions. If you don’t eat, I’ll have to tell her I threw half of it out.”

Ray’s lips twitch. “That’s hardly playing fair. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I simply don’t like eating alone.”

“And I’m simply not hungry.”

“At least sit with me and pretend to eat while you keep me company. It’ll make me feel less like I’m stealing your food.”

Ray gives in. They end up sitting on Ray’s couch with too much room between them, and eventually manage to stir up something like a conversation. Benton asks how Ray’s recovery is going. If he has found a new car yet. Ray asks about tracking down Muldoon and about Dief and how he’s doing. He doesn’t ask about Benton’s time in Canada after Muldoon.

Eventually, they run out of things to say. That has never happened before, but now they sit and fiddle and try to fill the awkward silence with meaningless words. There are so many things Benton could say, but he’s certain they wouldn’t be appreciated at this point.

The food is good, but Benton barely tastes any of it, not with the taste of Ray’s kiss still lingering on his lips. Maybe he should tell Ray that he wishes he hadn’t just kissed him to push him away but he cannot see how that would end any way but badly.

Ray himself shoves the food around on his plate for ten minutes before he gives up. He’s barely eaten anything. Benton had hoped that he would concentrate on eating when they ran out of words, that the awkwardness between them would be good for at least that, but he can tell from the way his friend holds himself that he’s actually feeling nauseous.

 Maybe he’s just sick. Maybe this is something that will pass.

Benton manages to make him lay down after dinner. It isn’t even hard. Ray looks about to pass out and he doesn’t protest when Benton offers to do the dishes. He stretches out on the couch after little prompting from the Mountie, placing one arm over his eyes and the other hand on his stomach. He probably really does feel sick, Benton thinks with mild worry and hopes Ray will fall asleep quickly.

He tries to be quiet while he cleans their plates. Ray told him to take the rest for Diefenbaker, who Benton assured him missed Mrs. Vecchio’s cuisine very much, and who currently is with Willie, who missed Diefenbaker very much.  So Benton packs the food Ray hasn’t eaten back into the box and the other boxes into the fridge for later and hopefully more successful use. He throws out the half-eaten take out, not sure if it’s still good and if Ray would notice if it wasn’t. Other than the take out and Mrs. Vecchio’s leftovers, there is literally no food in the apartment. Apparently Ray got something when he was hungry without any thought of stocking anything for the future.

The plates go back into the cabinet. There is one more, one chipped bowl, and one cooking pot. Benton wouldn’t bet any money on any of that having been brought by Ray over it having already been here when he moved in. He also realises that he doesn’t really think of this place as somewhere Ray actually lives. It doesn’t fit at all.

When he is done, Benton takes the suitcase and carries it over to the door he suspects leads to the bedroom. The room he finds on the other side is very small, barely big enough to contain a bed and a closet. In fact, it contains neither, just a darker square on the faded wallpaper and four dents in the carpet.

Benton places the suitcase inside none the less and takes a moment just to breathe. He can hear Ray stir on the couch and when he gets back into the living room, his friend is sitting up, looking at him suspiciously. “Are you done snooping around yet?” he asks, and there is something cold in his voice that doesn’t sound like Ray.

“I thought your things would best be stored in the bedroom,” Benton tries to explain. “Or what ought to be your bedroom.”

“I didn’t get around to buying a bed yet.” It’s obviously not a priority. Benton wonder’s if Ray even has priorities anymore.

“We should go later, after you rested properly. I can help you get it all inside, those mattresses are heavy and impractical to carry.”

“It’s no hurry. The couch does the job.”

“But we can’t both fit on there to sleep. Unless you want me to sleep on the floor. I do not mind that, of course, but in that case I would like a sleeping bag at the least.”

“Who says you’re going to stay here?”

“I’m going to stay with you, Ray.”

“And I don’t get a say in that?”

“No, Ray.” Benton tries to keep his voice friendly yet leave no doubt that this is not up to discussion. But it’s no use – he can see Ray taking offense, thinks that if it were Dief, he’d be able to see his hair stand up.

“It’s so nice of you to make decisions for me, Benny,” Ray says icily. “You think you can just show up here and I’ll let you do whatever you want in my home?”

“This isn’t a home, Ray, and I will not leave here until it has become one.” Benton takes a few steps into the room, towards the couch, looking for words to ease the atmosphere that has become so tense again, so quickly. But Ray doesn’t give him the chance.

“Then have fun trying,” he snaps, gets up, and leaves. He doesn’t even bother to put his shoes on properly.

Benton doesn’t try to stop him. He’s not entirely sure what he did wrong this time. Perhaps Ray, who had to do things against his will for so long, simply doesn’t react well to having control taken away from him. Benton should have considered that. He feels vaguely ashamed now, still not certain he got it right and worried he might be ashamed for the wrong reason. It’s a silly feeling. Mostly, he wants to talk to Ray and assure him that he had no intention of walking all over him, that he’s acting out of worry and love, but Ray is already gone and Benton decides that it might be better to let him be for a little while.

 

-

 

Ray makes it down one block before he stops to pull on the coat he grabbed on his way out and has to accept that he is a fucking idiot. Fraser comes to his place, bosses him around, and Ray runs out, leaving him to it, instead of kicking him out? Yeah, brilliant. He can almost hear what his old man would have to say about that. And for once he’d be right.

The thing is, Ray doesn’t feel up to another discussion right now. His emotions are on a roller-coaster anyway, and Benny’s presence doesn’t help. At all. Ray should never have gone to him after moving out. Benny should never have left Canada and whatever fun life he was planning on having there with Ray’s replacement.

He knows Fraser means well, even if it’s only guilt or a misplaced sense of duty that brought him here. But Ray loves him and cares about him and that means he can only hurt him and fuck everything up. Fraser is too important to him; he’d rather have the memory of their friendship than the reality of ruining it. Because Fraser doesn’t get that Ray is really _that_ fucked up and _that_ horrible, and in the end Ray can only disappoint him. He doesn’t want to imagine how Benny would react if he realized what Vegas had turned his friend into. He wants him gone before that can happen, and because Benny’s so fucking perfect that he puts too much pressure on Ray just by existing and Ray has forgotten how to deal with that. He knows he used to be able to. He used to be able to accept that the Mountie was several levels above him, accept that he was just a normal, fallible, petty human being himself and be okay with it, but now the fact that Fraser calls him friend seems like an accusation. The gap between them has become too wide.

Everything is so goddamn wrong. Ray wishes he remembered how to be a person.

A part of him is angry at Fraser, a bigger part of him is angry at himself and it just makes him more angry in general. He shouldn’t be out here on the street because he doesn’t know how he’ll react if anyone makes the mistake of talking to him. He can’t deal with _anyone_ right now.

Not that there are many people around. This part of the city isn’t as bad as Fraser’s old quarter, but no one walks here if they can avoid it. The weather doesn’t help. The wind is icy and the cold air burns in Ray’s lungs with every breath. By the second block he has to slow down, and at the corner he has to lean against the wall, clutching his chest and struggling for air.

A second later he forces himself upright again. He couldn’t allow himself to show weakness in public, like this. If anyone saw him…

If anyone saw him, Ray doesn’t know what would happen. Would anything happen? This isn’t Vegas, he realizes. But he still can’t appear weak. But then, why ever the hell not? It isn’t like anyone would care. His family isn’t around to worry, and they can’t fire him over it, either, since they won’t let him work in the first place.

The fucking undercover job has taken everything from him: his family, his work, his only friend, not to mention his self-respect and the ability to sleep at night. And then he came back and learned that his car was gone, too. When they told him, he’d only felt tired at first, too burned out to even care. Now the memory makes him angry, makes him want to punch something. The Riv had been the last thing on Earth that was his alone, not Armando’s, not Kowalski’s, and Benny and his new best friend had set it on fire and dumped it in the sea within five minutes of meeting.

Struggling to remain standing and not just sink to the ground right where he stands, Ray considers his options. He can’t go back, can’t deal with Benny or anyone else. He can’t go and get terribly drunk because he didn’t bring any money, and also because it would be a terrible idea. Armando drank. Ray doesn’t.

He could go back and get the car, the shitty one that doesn’t feel like his, just drive until he doesn’t know where he is anymore, but that would mean going back for his keys and running into Benny. He could throw himself in front of that passing bus, but that would be a mess and traumatize the poor bus driver. Then again, Ray doesn’t know why he should take that into consideration, since he’s obviously forgotten how not to be an asshole.

He shouldn’t have acted the way he had around Fraser, who only wants to help, for whatever reason. Lately, Ray feels like whoever he deals with, he can only either hide behind aggression, let Armando take over, or break down crying in front of fucking everyone. It’s not an excuse.

He feels like puking. He feels like his joints turn to jelly at the thought of doing anything at all. He stands motionless by the side of the road and watches the bus drive away. When he resumes walking, he doesn’t even care where he’s going to end up.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Benton waits for over an hour before he goes to search for his friend. He had expected Ray to be back by then, considering he hadn’t taken the car, and as far as Benton knows there is nothing nearby he could have gone. Of course he could be taking a long walk, but if the lingering consequences of his latest injury were as bad as he said, chances are he didn’t make it very far.

Benton doesn’t want to imagine Ray hanging around near his apartment building just waiting for him to leave.

He considers looking for a phone and calling Ray’s family to see if he showed up there, but that is not likely enough to risk worrying Mrs. Vecchio even more. So eventually he takes his coat and his hat and steps out into the cold afternoon air, knowing that he might just anger Ray even more by pestering him like this but feeling justified in doing so. He also feels justified in taking Ray’s car.

It’s the old work car Ray uses every time he finds himself without a vehicle due to explosion, which happens to him more often than to most other people and makes Benton glad he doesn’t own a car himself. He doesn’t know if it’s him who attracts disaster, or if it’s just something that tends to happen to green 1971 Buick Rivieras. Maybe it’s a combination of both.

At least Ray wasn’t there the last time it happened, he thinks, and smiles wistfully as he recalls that memorable highlight of his first case with Ray Kowalski.

Though everything turned out all right in the end, that first day after coming back from Canada  had been plain weird and confusing. Finding his best friend replaced by a total stranger everyone insisted had _always_ been his friend had caused him to seriously consider, for more than a moment, the possibility that his flight had accidentally delivered him in the wrong universe. All things considered, it hadn’t seemed that unlikely.

Maybe if Benton could make Ray understand just how much of a shock his disappearance had been Ray wouldn’t be so doubtful about how much Benton cared about him. But words, as soon as personal feelings were involved, have never come easy to him.

The sun is already setting, swallowing what little light the day had to offer, and it’s getting even colder. Benton doesn’t mind the cold, relishes in it, even, but he knows Ray doesn’t. He also knows that without help he won’t find his friend anytime soon, because unlike Diefenbaker, Ray doesn’t make a habit of marking his way for Benton to follow. And with the way Ray has been behaving lately, Benton can’t tell where he would go. Predicting his actions might even be easier if he were a total stranger and not someone Benton ought to know.

Maybe waiting this long was a mistake. Benton bites his lips, suddenly even more worried, as he makes his second stop, in front of Willie’s home. The setting sun, unseen behind the clouds, leaves a dim gloom behind that seems to descend upon the street like a warning.

Both Dief and Willie look disappointed when Benton announces that he’s going to take Dief with him now, but Willie at least understands that the wolf is needed for important work. Benton tells him that he’ll likely get the chance for more visits in the near future and is pretty sure he’s telling the truth.

It doesn’t look like they are going to go back to Canada anytime soon.

Dief whines and complains all the way to the car, but as soon as Benton looks him in the eyes and tells him that he needs to find Ray for him he understands that there are things more important than hanging out with his young friend and the dogs in the neighbourhood.

They begin their search in front of Ray’s building. It takes them down the street, one, two, three blocks, until Benton begins to feel silly because he could have found _this_ way on his own. Eventually, though, it seems like Ray has taken a turn and made his way through back alleys and side streets. Benton hopes he hasn’t gotten lost – he doubts Ray took the time to become acquainted with this area, but then, maybe wandering these streets is what he does all those nights he can’t sleep. It doesn’t seem likely.

At least the wind isn’t as sharp here; the surrounding buildings form a protective shield against the constant breeze. But they also block out the little daylight that remains, and Benton’s eyes aren’t as good in this kind of dark as they were ten years ago. Without Diefenbaker, he might have missed Ray when they finally catch up with him.

It doesn’t help that Ray sits in the shadows and doesn’t move. Ray must have noted their arrival but he doesn’t react at all when Benton approaches.

Dief whines and nuzzles Ray’s fingers that lie clasped loosely in front of him. Ray looks down at him, at his hands, like he’s forgotten how to move.

“It’s cold,” Benton says unnecessarily because he has to say _something_. Ray just kind of sighs, unheard; Benton sees the sag of his shoulders, how all energy seems to leave him as he breathes out.

Benton kneels beside Dief, buries one hand in the thick fur, but really he just wants to be at an angle where he can see Ray’s face. He hasn’t really thought about what exactly he would do when he found him. Get him home, of course. But how?

Ray doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t exactly look away either, but his eyes refuse to focus. After a while, his right hand curls into a fist, but Benton can tell that there is no force behind it. He reaches for it without thinking and finds it cold as ice.

Ray is wearing his coat, but he’s not moving, and probably hasn’t been for a while. His coat isn’t that tick, he’s not wearing gloves or a hat, and he doesn’t even have thick hair like Benton to protect his head from the cold. He’s shivering softly; Benton can feel it through their linked hands.

Benton is wearing his hat. It’s a habit he can’t seem to shake even though he’s on an extended leave, and now he takes it off and puts it on Ray’s head, remembering another day so very long ago that involved cold as well, and dead horses. Today, the memory holds no amusement.

The hat, naturally, is still too big for Ray, but it’s better than nothing. Ray even looks up at the gesture, but his face is almost entirely lost in shadow by now.

Then Ray opens his mouth and closes it again, as if even speaking were too much of an effort. Benton can basically feel the exhaustion radiating off of him – exhaustion not only in a physical sense but the bone-deep tiredness of a man who doesn’t see how there could be a point to anything at all. And he realizes that if he doesn’t do something, Ray will just sit here until he freezes to death.

So he takes Ray by the arms, pulls him to his feet and leads him out of the alley and towards his place, an arm wrapped around Ray’s shoulders to shield him from the wind and Diefenbaker trotting along on Ray’s other side, much too close.

 

-

 

Ray doesn’t even remember the way back. Suddenly he’s in his living room, staring at the dark window, and doesn’t know how he got here. He is surprised when the light is turned on and he sees his own blurred reflection standing in the mostly empty room, because somehow he didn’t expect Benny to be still here.

The apartment isn’t well heated, but after the icy wind it still feels warm. Too warm, almost, even though Ray can’t seem to stop the shivers that run through his body. He tries to say something when Benny gets him out of his coat but can’t seem to bring himself to do so much as blink. The next moment he is sitting on the couch and Benny wraps the blanket around him. It’s only when Ray finally looks up and doesn’t get blinded by the ceiling lamp that he realizes he’s still wearing the Mountie’s hat.

Fraser is very close as he arranges the blanket around Ray and says something about getting warm and how Ray should wait for Benny to do this or that, and all of a sudden Ray wants to lean into the warm body, wants to cling to him and cry into his shoulder and take some of the simple comfort Benny is so willingly and obliviously offering to him. Ray doesn’t know how he can make it another minute without that, but Benny is already moving away and he feels like he’s been nailed to the couch and doesn’t do anything.

Ray doesn’t lean back, but he closes his eyes and drifts a little, as much as he can these days. His thoughts begin to wander, but they don’t wander anywhere he would want them and when he tries to redirect them, he becomes alert again, and too aware of what he doesn’t want to think about and why. He is so tired it feels like he can never open his eyes again, yet he’s too wired to find any rest.

Dief’s breath against his neck is a welcome distraction. With effort, Ray turns his head to look at the wolf sitting beside him on the couch, and he finds that he is leaning against the back of the couch and that the hat has fallen off his head. Huh.

Dief is looking at him as if he were a doughnut.

Somehow, the thought doesn’t make Ray laugh. He just blinks at Dief and Dief stares at him and then Benny is back and leads him to the other room because apparently he thinks bare walls and a general prison cell theme will improve the situation.

Except there is a bed in the room, or what counts as a bed by Mountie standards in any case. Ray blinks at it. It’s just a mattress on the floor, covered in blankets, and the room still looks like a prison cell safe the bars, but it’s a mattress and blankets above what Ray expected to find in here. When Fraser leads him over with a hand on Ray’s back and makes him sit down, Ray discovers that it isn’t even a mattress but a futon. Still.

“I took the liberty of taking your car to collect Dief and a few things from my place. Not that I collected Dief from my place, of course, since he was with Willie, but the other things come from my, I mean Turnbull’s, or what would have been Turnbull’s apartment.” Benny is rambling. Ray can barely follow the words but there is something familiar and soothing about it, so he just lets the voice surround him and doesn’t even try to understand what Benny is actually trying to say.

“I didn’t have the futon when you were visiting the other day, in case you were wondering,” Fraser rambles on even as he makes Ray lie down and pulls off his shoes. “I know it’s not all that comfortable, which is why I put this blanket on top of it. Although I have you know that sleeping on a futon can be very good for your back. In any case, your couch is uneven and not quite long enough so I thought you might sleep better if you could stretch out. I’ll be next door, if you need me.”

Ray hits the pillow and immediately turns his head to let the soft fabric soak up the liquid from his watering eyes, to prevent Fraser seeing it and drawing the wrong conclusion (Ray is just so _tired_ ), but Fraser is busy tucking first one and then another woolen blanket around his friend, and there is a heavy weight settling on the futon beside Ray, and then Ray must have missed a few seconds because the next moment, the light is turned off.

“Thanks, Benny,” he whispers, but he doesn’t think Benny heard him before the door closed.

Someone is breathing heavily beside him, their weight pressing against him through the blankets, and for a second Ray is overcome by a different kind of memory and a flash of panic that brings him all the way back to wakefulness. But it’s only Diefenbaker stretched out beside him, having obviously decided that this pile of futon and blankets and Ray is more comfortable than any other place in the apartment. He looks at Ray, his eyes just barely visible in the streetlight falling in through the window Eventually he decides that the human is done turning, whether he likes it or not, and firmly places his head on Ray’s chest.

He still looks at Ray, but he’s probably not going to eat him. Ray lets his own head sink into Benny’s pillow and tries to feel safe and comfortable with this big, friendly creature sharing his bed. His hand finds its way out from underneath the blankets and starts scratching the wolf’s ears. Dief whines softly and seems to become heavier as he prepares to fall asleep.

Ray stares at the ceiling, at the bright square of orange light thrown there by the window.

He’s so tired his eyes are watering and it feels as if with every exhale of breath his body is sinking into the hard floor he can feel all too clearly beneath him. But the pounding headache behind his eyes keeps him awake as much as the thoughts that keep running in circles inside his mind. Thoughts of Vegas, of things he did and didn’t do, of things he could have prevented or achieved if he had acted differently. Every attempt to distract himself is futile. Either his thoughts stick where they are or they drift to something he wants to think about even less.

At some point he thinks about his mother and the way she looked at him when he last saw her, and that memory might be the worst yet because it serves as the undeniable proof  of how much Vegas fucked him up, for good. (He almost wants to write her a letter of condolence for the son she’ll never see again. The son that died in a basement underneath a casino because he wasn’t the kind of person who could order somebody’s eyes gouged out and have them dropped blind and bleeding in the middle of the fucking desert.)

His neck hurts, and so does his chest with every breath. His feet feel like ice. He’d like to turn and lie on his side, see if that helps, but it would disturb the wolf lying on him. What he’d like more is find some distraction. Get up and clean the bathroom. Something. Anything. Even lying down he’s feeling dizzy but moving would offer distraction that the ceiling doesn’t. Maybe he’d fall over and knock himself out on the sink. Ray is so desperate for real sleep, for that little bit of rest and oblivion, that he could cry, but giving up on the attempt by losing himself in mindless activity is still better than lying here.

But he cannot do that as long as Benny is out there. Ray sighs, closes his eyes with determination, and opens them again a second later, too aware of the other living being in his bed to relax, even though that being is furry and Dief.

Ray itches to get up and _do_ something, before he goes crazy. Curse Benny and his wolf for coming here and ruining even that escape. Or maybe not, because sometimes the temptation of having a drink before bedtime, just enough to help him sleep, is very strong, and tonight is one of those nights. Ray doesn’t have any alcohol on hand, of course. He’s not an idiot. But he could go get some, he could…

Armando had liked to drink, so Ray had had to drink as well, sometimes, when it couldn’t be avoided. Of course, Armando had been used to drinking and Ray hadn’t. And getting drunk, in his position, could have easily ended with him blowing his cover. So he had to be careful, had to pretend to be drunker than he was, but the alcohol got to him anyway. Not so badly he didn’t know what he was doing, but enough to make everything a little easier. To make him not feel as terrified, to make him care a little less about the atrocities he committed. And damn if he hadn’t liked that. And he had known that was bad, wrong, that he _should_ be terrified and he _should_ hate himself for the things he had done, and that there was no telling what a person he would be if he ever lost control, but as the months piled up, it had become harder and harder to take that into consideration.

Then Armando’s buddy Johnny had bought a prostitute for a party to celebrate a big deal that was about to go down. Just a girl, barely in her twenties, who didn’t speak a word of English, never mind Italian, and had probably been lured into the States with the promise of a good job to support her family in wherever and had instead found herself a sex slave for some greedy asshole. Not a voluntary prostitute, in any case, and Johnny had known that. Johnny liked his girls unwilling. Fortunately Armando didn’t, and everyone knew that, but everyone also knew that he respected his friend’s hobbies.

That day, five months into the job, Ray had understood, for the first time really _understood_ , that he had ended up in a world where rape was a hobby and the upcoming death of an entire family (including a teenage boy, just fourteen and eager to get his father’s approval, and a little girl who would get killed in the crossfire) was something to be celebrated.

So Johnny had brought the girl to the party and Ray hadn’t been able to do anything to stop them as he and the two younger Iguana brothers passed her around like a toy. He’d tried to come up with something, anything, while trying to keep his horror out of his face and his voice, but his protests had been met with good humoured laughter and a slap on the back, and when he downright insisted the reaction had been bemusement. He’d thought about grabbing his gun and shooting every man in the room, but all of them had been armed just like the goons that seemed to hang out everywhere the Iguanas went. He wouldn’t have gotten them all before they killed him, and it wouldn’t have saved the girl, would only have ruined everything. Or so he had told himself as he sat unmoving in the back of the room with one of his expensive cigarettes and tried not to watch and not to listen. Maybe he had simply been a coward.

(He’d been thinking about Benny all the time. How he would have found a way to stop this and how Ray would never be able to look at him again, and now Benny is in the other room worrying about him because he doesn’t have a fucking clue.)

Afterwards they all had dinner and Ray had joked and laughed and discussed business with the bastards like Armando would have done, and when it was over he had gotten blackout drunk for the first time in his life. But of course he couldn’t just go and drink himself into a stupor at home. Too dangerous, too suspicious. No, he’d stayed in character even then and paid a visit to some hooker who was high on something or other and wouldn’t have cared if he’d told her he was Father Christmas. He should have cared, he thinks now, should have tried to save her from herself. Instead he’d just been grateful that she was giving him a break.

The next day he woke up and for a few blessed seconds he was at peace with the world. Then he took in his surroundings and the girl flipping through the pages of a magazine beside him and he realized that he didn’t remember how he had ended up in this bed, didn’t remember what he had _done_. The night before was gone from his memory except for the parts he had been trying to forget, and now he was left with this giant black hole in which he could have done _anything_. The fact that he was still dressed was only a small consolation. The girl didn’t seem scared of him, but that didn’t mean anything either. She was probably used to guys slapping her around or worse, and Ray couldn’t even look in her face long enough to search for marks.

He’d managed to make it to the bathroom before the panic took hold completely, which was great because the girl was sober now and he couldn’t allow himself to freak out in front of her. He also couldn’t ask her what had happened because Armando wouldn’t. Armando had been a fucking bastard and now Ray was, too. Only that Armando had grown up in this life, had been raised to fulfil his role since he could walk, while Ray had gone there more or less by choice and had been raised to know better.

Ray had spent twenty minutes throwing up everything he’d ever eaten and then he’d cleaned up and driven to the Iguana estate because Mickey had wanted to see him that afternoon.

Dief whines in protest and shifts when Ray turns and curls into a ball, disturbing his slumber. A jolt of fear surges through Ray at the unexpected movement behind him but it barely even registers in his attempt to breathe through the nausea and the self-loathing. His nails dig into his palms and his fists press against his ears and he hides beneath the blankets as if by doing so he could drown out his past. A bullet through the brain would get rid of those memories, he thinks, and if he had a gun right now, if Benny weren’t in the other room…

He squeezes his eyes shut and struggles for air.

 

-

 

Benton sleeps on the couch. There is neither blanket nor pillow for him since he has given Ray both the single blanket already here and all the things he has brought from his own place, but he doesn’t mind, even though it is far from warm and cosy inside the apartment. A couch is more comfort than he had many a night and more comfort than he needs, even though this one is old and not in a good state. He doesn’t like the thought of Ray sleeping on it but for him it is quite enough.

After delivering his friend to the makeshift bed in the other room, Benton had taken a moment to check out the bathroom (small like everything else, but meticulously cleaned) and take care of some personal hygiene. He would have liked to make Ray take a shower before bed, to warm him up some, but feared the action would wake him up so much he’d be unable to fall asleep later.

Before he settles on the couch he throws a look at the closed door behind which Ray is hopefully sleeping. It’s hard to resist the temptation to check on his friend, but Benton doesn’t want to disturb him if he is or risk annoying him if he isn’t, and besides, Diefenbaker is in there, ready to alert his human companion if anything should be wrong.

By the time he lies down, it’s dark outside and his sense of time – there is no clock anywhere in the room – tells him that it is past his usual bedtime. Still, Benton finds it difficult to find rest. He’s too wired to shut off his mind and this place provides absolutely no distraction. It is hardly a surprise everything is so clean, even though Ray has only just moved in.

The night is long, even for Benton. He finds himself missing the sound of Dief breathing in the dark nearby that had accompanied his way into sleep for so long but is grateful that the wolf is keeping an eye on their friend. After a while, he realizes that he’s listening for any kind of sound coming from the other room, but there’s nothing.

The Mountie has spent many a night listening for sounds in the dark, but mostly outside in the wild, where there are many sounds. In such a situation it is important to be able to tell harmless sounds from dangerous ones. After the plane crash that once stranded him and Ray in the wilderness and left Benton temporarily blind and paralyzed, every sound had suddenly seemed much more sinister, because even things that usually would be no danger had become a potential threat. In his state Benton could neither have gotten away from whatever small and presumably harmless creature was causing this noise or that, nor would he have been able to effectively fight them off. The only things that kept him calm and grounded back then were Ray’s heavy footfalls as he stumbled over the uneven ground with Benton on his back, the sound of Dief running beside them and, admittedly, his concussion.

His mind wanders to the last time he’s slept out in the open, or rather, has not slept. It was the last day of their way back from the aborted search for the Hand of Franklin, and the noise Benton remembers best is the sound of Ray Kowalski’s even breaths on the other side of the campfire. He had been surprised and grateful that the other man still managed to sleep peacefully despite nothing going the way he had planned it; that he seemed to harbor no resentment or bitterness at all over the turn of events.

It had been one of Ray’s remarks that made him turn around in the first place: about how his first long undercover job had messed with his head and only Stella had helped him get through that. Not as a wife and lover but as his friend. It was then that Benton had realized that going for an extended trip through the middle of nowhere, right after his other best friend had returned from what Ray Kowalski called the Mother of All Undercover Assignments, was a bad idea. He needed to go back to Chicago, he’d declared later that evening. Just to check up on Ray, see how he was doing. If all was well, they could easily resume their trip.

He is so glad, now, that he returned when he did.

His position in Canada is on hold. Diefenbaker has complained a little but sees the advantages of civilization, most of which come in the form of food. And Ray Kowalski seems to have found some measure of peace after one month of sleeping outside during the Canadian winter and is quite happy to take back his position at the 2-7, under his real name this time. All things considered, it’s not so bad. Benton doesn’t need to apologize to anyone for returning.

But even if he did, he’d still have come. Even if Ray doesn’t want him here. His job with the RCMP, though important to him, is something anyone can do in his absence, but he is the only friend Ray has. At the end of the day, this is where he belongs.

Benton finds his own measure of peace in the realization. A certainty that trying to help is the right thing to do, even though he is not sure how to accomplish this task. It helps him lose some of the underlying anxiety (though none of the worry) that kept him awake and he finally falls asleep, sometime close to midnight.

He wakes at dawn and is fully alert instantly. It’s the kind of awakening he had a few times during his time in Chicago, when someone entered his room at night and he woke to find himself in unexpected and very alarming company. But this time there is no disillusioned assassin sitting at the foot of his bed, nor an entire family of Inuit on a trip to the States invading his home. This time, there is nothing, just the noise of traffic outside the window and inside, silence.

Benton listens for a moment, convinced that there must have been a reason for his waking up. But it is completely quiet in the apartment. Next door, Dief doesn’t make a sound. Perhaps it was a dream that woke him, then. Benton is certain that he did dream, but he remembers nothing besides the smell of kerosene.

Or perhaps he woke because he has slept enough. Dawn comes late this time of year, even here. Still, Benton feels uneasy and worried as he gets off the couch and looks outside at the slowly brightening sky.

He feels strangely nervous when he opens the door to the bedroom, careful not to make any noise. But there is no reason for it. Dief looks up at his intrusion and wags his tail once. He seems calm enough and that alone is enough to dissipate a great deal of Benton’s worry.

Ray lies curled on his side, his head barely peeking out underneath the covers. He doesn’t move when Benton silently comes closer, is obviously deeply asleep. Good. Benton kneels down and carefully moves away the blanket that covers most of his friend’s face to make it easier for him to breathe. He sighs silently when he notices the tear tracks on the pale face. Evidently, Ray didn’t have a good night, though now his sleeps seems calm enough.

Dief keeps looking at Benton, but he makes no move to get up even though he’d usually be demanding breakfast at this time. Benton pats his head and mouths his thanks. The wolf just sighs and rests his head on his paws. He’s worried, too.

Benton leaves again, to find something to do outside where he won’t disturb anyone and Dief goes back to sleep.

 

-

 

When Ray wakes up he finds himself on the floor of an unfamiliar room with bare walls, and the first thought in his head is that they made him and are going to bury pieces of him in five different corners of the desert while the rest of him is still alive to hear about it. For a long moment he’s too terrified to move.

Then the face of a wolf appears in his field of vision, and he needs a moment to remember how he knows this wolf or even knows that it _is_ a wolf and not, as any sane person would assume, a husky.

If they’d made him, he would be in a basement (he knows far too well in _which_ basement), not in a room with pale morning light falling in through a window. And they wouldn’t have given him a blanket, or left his legs unbroken. And they most certainly wouldn’t have given him a wolf, unless it was meant to tear him apart.

No, no they wouldn’t. Too quick. But his heart is still beating way too fast, even as he slowly figures out what is going on. He remembers Benny, he does, but how can he tell if that’s a memory or a dream when the whole room stinks of the basement underneath the casino?

Dief whines softly and nudges him with his nose. Ray finally gives him the attention he deserves and stares  into intelligent eyes that hold no malice . Nothing makes sense; past and present are all jumbled up, but Ray begins to understand that he’s safe here, that Vegas is far away and that everyone who’s made the mistake of trusting him and calling him friend in the last year and a half is now in jail, awaiting a trail that will end, for each of them, either in lifelong incarceration or death.

And he’s here in his self-chosen exile because he should be facing punishment for his crimes, too, and no one seems to get that.

And Benny is out there, doubtlessly awake already, sitting in Ray’s goddamn apartment with not even a magazine to read. And his damn wolf is in here and doesn’t even mind when Ray buries his face in the soft fur of his neck and starts to cry.

When he is done, he leaves his face where it is, where it smells of Dief. He can still smell the other things; the stink that lingers, but it’s not as bad here, where it also smells like something good.

“You won’t tell Benny, right?” he whispers, and doesn’t even care that Dief can’t hear him as long as Ray’s face is hidden in his fur.

 

-

 

Benton checks on Ray again, just before noon. Ray is still asleep, holding Dief in his arms like a giant stuffed animal, and Dief looks like he’s okay with it, surprisingly enough. He also looks hungry, though, when he turns his head to eye the now open door and the refrigerator on the opposite wall. Ray stirs, covers his face with his hand, and Dief, taking this as permission to leave, gets up and wanders out of the room to sit in front of the fridge in a gesture that says more than a thousand words.

Benton will have to walk him, too. He bites his lips when Ray doesn’t fully wake up but curls into the warm spot left by the wolf instead and sinks back into sleep. Benton doesn’t want to leave him alone but he also doesn’t want to wake him up. Ray _needs_ sleep, desperately, and Benton doesn’t even know when he finally managed to fall asleep last night. Chances are he hasn’t actually been out for more than four or five hours.

For the moment, he leaves the door open and serves breakfast to his lupine partner, who eagerly devours the considerable amount of carbonara Ray did not eat the day before. When he’s done, Dief eyes the door, and Benton sighs, thorn.

In the end, he takes Dief downstairs to open the front door for him and sends him on his way. “Now, I know this is a new area for you and I bet there are a lot of strays around who are only waiting for a pack leader,” he tells him as they part, making sure Dief looks at him and understands what he’s saying. “But Ray isn’t doing well, and I know you are worried, too, so I trust that you will not get in any trouble but come back as soon as you can. I know I can rely on you.”

He’s probably overdoing it, and judging by Diefenbaker’s impatient whine, the wolf sees it the same way. For all that the wolf acts irresponsibly from time to time, he will not let Benton and Ray down now. This is about his pack, after all.

Up in the apartment, Benton finds Ray curled up even tighter and shivering slightly. It’s not that cold, but it’s not exactly warm either, and two woollen blankets are obviously not enough to keep his friend warm now that Dief’s heat is gone. With the lack of food and rest, Ray’s body evidently doesn’t have the energy to deal with even moderately cool temperatures. Benton thinks of Ray sitting in the cold the day before, because Benton more or less drove him from his home. He thinks of him living in this barely heated place for days with only a blanket, and in the end he doesn’t hesitate very long before he slips underneath the blankets as well and fits his own body against Ray’s back.

When Ray doesn’t react, he gathers his courage and carefully wraps an arm around his friend’s chest to pull him closer. Gradually, after a few minutes, Ray relaxes and his trembling ceases as he leans into the heat of Benton’s body.

They have never lain like this before, not even during the good times, when there would have been a chance to enjoy it. Benton feels Ray’s body against his and is aware of how thin it is, how cool. He sighs soundlessly and resists the urge to kiss the top of Ray’s head.

Time passes. Not much – the sun climbs a little higher and breaks through the clouds for the first time in days. Its rays hit the window and brighten up the room. Benton neither sleeps nor dozes. He isn’t tired. When the sudden flood of light causes Ray to stir, he rubs his chest with soothing movements, hoping to ease him back into sleep.

Ray stills, but only for a moment, and in that moment Benton can feel his heartbeat speed up underneath his palm. It’s too late to react, to withdraw when he realizes his mistake. Ray is already trying to bolt and it is instinct rather than thought that makes Benton wrap both his arms around him and hold on.

“It’s me,” he hears himself say. “Ray, it’s me. Calm down.”

It’s not a particularly smart or practical thing to say. Ray may not even hear him. He fights against the hold, panic evident in the rapidness of his breath, and chokes on the word _No_ as he tries to pry apart the fingers holding him.

The moment Benton lets him go he’s in the corner of the room, finally turning to stare at Benton with wide eyes. Benton is still kneeling on the bed, feeling lost, trying to look as harmless as possible. His arms are hanging uselessly by his sides now. Ray looks at him as if he didn’t know him. His eyes dart to the open door and Benton is convinced he will make a run for it, but then they travel back to the Mountie and finally it seems to register to Ray where he is and who he is with.

The realization doesn’t seem to calm him down much. Ray’s expression changes from terrified to devastated as he bites back a sob and buries his face in his arms.

“Ray,” Benton says.

“Leave me alone.” Ray’s voice is trembling, but the words are clear enough. Benton leaves, and he closes the door behind him as he goes.

 

-

 

Dief isn’t there when Benton opens the front door to check, but he comes around the corner within three seconds, throwing Benton an accusing look that indicates a waiting time of at least five hours. He starts up the stairs but comes down again when his partner doesn’t follow.

He finds Benton sitting on the third step, suddenly too drained to climb back up. “I think I made a mistake,” he admits when Diefenbaker sits down in front of him. “It might be best to give Ray a few minutes to himself.”

Dief whines softly, expressing that time spend with Dief is always better than time spent without Dief. Benton smiles tiredly and pats his head.

Dief growls.

“I don’t know.” Benton sighs. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t know what to do. It’s so much worse than I thought.”

A whine. Benton shakes his head. “He won’t talk to me. No, no I haven’t asked him. Because it’s not that simple, Dief. Humans don’t work like that.”

Dief isn’t convinced, Benton can see that. But he knows Ray doesn’t want to talk to him about what keeps him awake at night, and Benton will respect that.

He does, however, hope that Ray is talking to someone else. Someone professional, perhaps. But it doesn’t look that way.

“I don’t know how to help him,” he tells his wolf, and those are the most terrible words he has ever spoken.

He finally forces himself to climb the stairs up to the fourth floor again, anxious to see what kind of state he’ll find Ray in and dreading it at the same time. The door to the apartment is still unlocked, which he counts as a good sign for lack of anything else.

Ray is nowhere to be seen, but the sound of the running shower is coming from the bathroom. Benton breathes a sigh of relief and settles on the couch to wait. He wishes there was anything to do, so that it wouldn’t look so much like he’s hovering (which he is).

The shower is shut off after a while. Benton sits and listens. The noise of water splashing into the sink is the most notable one he hears, he can hear it running through the pipes. Everything else Ray does in there is beyond him, but he can guess.

It’s past noon. He wonders if he should heat up some food. Now that he thinks about it, he’s actually quite hungry, and Ray should be as well, even if he probably isn’t.

So Benton is standing at the stove, pouring the contents of one of the boxes into the single cooking pot Ray owns, when his friend leaves the bathroom. He is freshly showered and actually a little flushed from the heat of the water. He’s shaved, and is wearing a new set of clothes, some color that makes the gray paleness of his skin stand out but actually makes Benton feel a hint of delight because compared to the crumbled clothes of the day before it looks like a sign of life.

Most of all, he must have gotten it from the suitcase his mother send which means Ray made the effort to open it. A smile spreads over Benton’s face for what feels like the first time in weeks. “Good morning, Ray,” he greets, hoping his presence will not upset the precarious balance his friend seems to have reached, that it is actually welcome. “I’m making breakfast.”

“More like lunch,” Ray notices. “I haven’t slept that long in ages.”

He doesn’t mention what happened when he woke up and Benton will not bring it up if he doesn’t. For now, he’s fine with Ray acting like he is still alive. “How are you feeling?”

“I have a headache from hell, to be honest.” Benton isn’t surprised. So little food and sleep paired with so much emotional stress will do that. “I probably didn’t drink enough.”

“Maybe.” Benton fills water into the glass and hands it to him. Ray takes it with a grimace.

“I think I need to get some proper food stuff,” he muses. “Somehow, I have a craving for orange juice.”

“You need some sugar in your blood.” Benton is aware that he sounds like his grandmother, but that’s okay because she was mostly right. (Or so she taught him.) “Eat something. It’ll help. Do you have anything for the headache?”

“Don’t need anything. Food will do.”

“Let’s hope so.” Benton gets the plates and tries not to grin too happily, not to make a big deal out of this and look like a little boy at Christmas just because Ray is finally showing an interest in being here again.

Ray doesn’t eat much, but it’s still more than the day before. Benton eats with an appetite that comes from careful optimism and tries not to stare, not to wonder too obviously what caused this very welcome change. Dief gets the leftovers, like before, and when they are done, Benton does the dishes while Ray goes into the bedroom and rummages through the suitcase. When Benton is done, he pokes his head into the other room and finds his friend folding clothes that must have gotten into disarray when he pulled out the things he is wearing now. “I need a closet,” Ray states.

“That would seem like a good thing to have, yes.”

“And a bed, with some actual blankets and pillows. I can’t keep using yours. Please tell me you didn’t spend the whole night on the couch with nothing.”

“It was no bother,” Benton assures him. “I slept well.”

“Like hell. I’m sorry, Benny. I’m a horrible host.”

“Since I invited myself that is quite alright. You’re feeding me and Dief, which is enough to fill the requirements of hospitality under the circumstances.”

“You’re feeding yourselves, you mean.” Ray frowns as he looks in Benton’s general direction without really focusing on him. “You said something about helping me get a bed yesterday?” It’s an honest question, like he doesn’t trust his memory.

“Yes, Ray. If you feel like it, we can go right away.”

“Yeah, I guess we should. I need so much stuff, we probably have to go twice, at least. I should probably get a TV, if you’re staying overnight again, so you can watch hockey, for whatever reason you would want to.” He gives Benton a quick grin. “And some groceries. And a phone, just in case.”

“Your family will be happy to hear from you,” Benton says and immediately regrets it when Ray’s hand, holding a shirt, begins to shake so hard he can see it even from his position in the doorway. Ray quickly puts down what he is holding and crosses his arms to hide his reaction.

“We should get going if we want to get everything done,” he says. Benton does him the favour of nodding and leaving to get their coats.

 

-

 

Ray continues to be in good spirits throughout the day, which in his case means that he complains a lot about the shop clerks who keep them waiting, the lack of heating at the grocer’s (“We’re in the frozen foods department, Ray.”) and the quality of the furniture they are inspecting. His comment of “What good is a closet if two grown men won’t even fit in it?” is a particular highlight that gives them the attention of everyone within earshot and makes Benton giggle. He is too happy that Ray actually cares enough to be picky about the furniture he is going to put into his apartment to let it bother him.

In the end it doesn’t take too much time for him to make his choices, though. They buy a queen size bed during their first trip, drop it off at the apartment, and make another trip for the rest. In the end, Ray buys a closet, a bookshelf, a small television and a table to put it on, another set of dishes and a house phone. At the grocery store he lets Benton pick most of the stuff. The only thing he actively chooses is several liters of lemonade.

It’s on the way back that Benton starts getting suspicious. Ray’s mood is almost _too_ good to be real. Throughout the day he’s complained about all kinds of unimportant things because that’s what he _does_ , but he never once complained about the headache that is obviously still bothering him, or the painful sounding cough that overcomes him in fits every now and again, or about being tired or hungry, when even Benton, who is in a far better physical state, feels the length of the day and the weight of their purchases in his bones.

Maybe Benton has allowed his relief over Ray being better to blind him to the fact that nothing is actually better at all.

So he looks for signs that things are _not_ okay, and he must have been less subtle than he thought, because he catches Ray looking back more and more often, his face hard to read.

It’s after they set up the bed and manoeuver the mattress on top of it that one of them finally decides to no longer ignore the issue. Ray sits on the new bed, which is high enough that his feet aren’t quite touching the ground, and says without looking at Benton, “I owe you an apology.”

Benton doesn’t quite sit on the bed, but he leans against it, at a careful distance like he would with an animal he doesn’t want to spook. “For what?”

“I’ve been a dick.”

“No, you haven’t. Well, actually you have, but under the circumstances that’s perfectly understandable.”

“That’s no excuse. I was horrible to you, even though you came all the way from Canada for me. I guess I owe it to you to at least make an effort.”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“In a manner of speaking. I didn’t have a very good night, Benny. Did a lot of thinking, and then, after waking up I thought some more, and I realized that as miserable as things are, if I keep hiding in this hole and push everyone and everything away just because I don’t fit into my old life anymore, nothing will ever change. It will just be one miserable day after another until…” He trails off and gives a half-hearted shrug. “So I decided that if that wasn’t what I wanted, I’d have to make an effort to keep it from happening.”

Benton has no illusions about this being as simple as Ray makes it sound, or that just because Ray decided to try, things will be easy from now on. But Ray _is_ trying now, and Benton’s presence no longer feels like a losing battle.

“I’m proud of you, Ray.” The words slip out almost against his will, because he is. He’s so proud, right now, that his words seem painfully inadequate.

“Aw, Benny.” Ray ducks his head, looking embarrassed. “It’s nothing more than deciding to get up in the morning.”

“Sometimes that’s the hardest task of the day.” Benton reaches out to put a hand on Ray’s shoulder and then, when Ray dares to meet his eyes for maybe the first time all day, he pulls him up and into the hug he’s wanted to give since he came back from Canada.

After a second of tension, Ray hugs him back with a strength that Benton hadn’t expected his bony body to possess, and he realizes, once again, just how much he loves this man.

 

-

 

The sleeping arrangements require some negotiation. Ray insists that Benton should take the bed this night, since he got the couch the night before. Benton insists that he will be perfectly fine on the futon. Ray points out that the bed is better and Benton should take it because Ray probably won’t be able to sleep tonight anyway. Benton sleeping in the living room would result in either Ray disturbing him with his nightly activities or in Ray being confined to the bedroom all night, where the lack of anything to do would drive him crazy.

As a compromise, Benton decides to set up the futon on the bedroom floor, so the only inconvenience might be Ray stepping on him on his way in or out of bed. Consequently, the closet doesn’t fit into that room anymore and ends up in the living room, right next to the bookshelf they somehow manage to fix to the wall despite having forgotten to get any tools other than a hammer. The closet gets filled with the clothes Ray’s mother sent, and there is still plenty of room for all the clothes Benton brought to the States. He gladly accepts Ray’s offer to drive him to his place so he can get everything he needs. In the end, Benton just takes pretty much everything, including Dief’s foot dish and the books he took along for the trip. The only thing he leaves is his service revolver.

They don’t eat until they are done with their work, and by that time, Benton is ravenous. Even Ray eats a little more, though he looks like he has to force himself to do it. Dief still gets plenty of leftovers, as well as a special treat in from of a doughnut that Benton got him as a reward for being so supportive.

While they work and eat, the television is running in the background. Benton only listens with one ear, but he notices Ray paying close attention to the news. A baseball game comes on and while it goes mostly unwatched by either of them, the subdued background noise adds a certain level of normalcy to everything.

Outside the window, night has long since fallen, and when Benton checks the newly purchased clock on the wall over the bookshelf, he realizes with some surprise that it is almost midnight. As if his body had just waited for him to become aware of this fact, he suddenly feels ridiculously tired.

He’s the first to go into the bathroom to brush his teeth and get ready for the night: After Ray takes his places in the bathroom, Benton unpacks the new sheets and gets the bed ready for his friend to use. The result, while not as cosy as Ray’s room in his family’s house or as comfortably familiar as Fraser’s apartment in West Racine, is acceptable enough. Comfortable even, when Benton sits down to wait. Ray isn’t done yet and Benton doesn’t want to lie down before he is because the futon is between the door and the bed and he is tired enough that falling asleep prematurely is a possibility. He fears it might cause Ray to decide to not even give the bed a try if he thinks he might disturb his friend by getting to it. Or something. Maybe Benton just wants to stay awake until Ray lies down to make sure he really does it, even though he knows that is no guarantee for sleep. The whole situation still feels far too fragile, like an illusion that might shatter if Ray doesn’t find rest.

So he lies back and fixes his gaze on the ceiling. The lamp in this room is rather dim, he notices. Not good for reading in bed, and they forgot to buy a bedside lamp. Something for tomorrow, he thinks. Just because Ray has some furniture now doesn’t mean they are done turning this place into a home. Perhaps they will never be. A part of Benton doesn’t expect Ray to live here very long, in this tiny, badly heated place in a rough neighbourhood. It’s better than where Benton lived for most of his time in this city, and much better than the place he took over from Turnbull, but that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t fit Ray.

Or maybe it doesn’t fit the image of Ray Benton has in his mind. Maybe it’s unfair of him to expect his friend to still be the same man he remembers after all he has been through. Unfair and dangerous. If Benton tries to push Ray into fulfilling Benton’s expectations, however unconsciously, he will be doing more harm than good.

The thought comes with the determination to watch his own words and actions as well as a vague, aimless sense of loss. For now, he will be happy if Ray is more than a shadow, he thinks, and the next thing he knows it that it’s dark and he’s lying underneath the covers, on a surface much softer than a futon.

The initial confusion soon fades into irritation at himself. Here Benton is, lying comfortably in Ray’s bed, and Ray is nowhere to be seen. The futon is untouched. Everything happened exactly the way Benton didn’t want it to.

There is no clock in this room, so he has no way of telling the time, but the sky outside the window (they forgot blinds) is pitch black and there is no noise of passing cars, so Benton can at least tell that it is the middle of the night. Perhaps four a.m., five at the latest. He hasn’t slept all that long, then, but the irritation and the sudden sadness successfully drive away all tiredness.

Benton doesn’t know if the doors in this apartment had been oiled this well from the start or if Ray took care of any squeaking after moving in; in any case, the bedroom door is blessedly silent when Benton pushes it open. Ray probably notices him anyway, but he doesn’t react at all when his friend quietly steps into the living room.

Perhaps it’s the bigger size of this room, or the fact that the heater is in a less convenient position that makes the living room feel so much cooler than the bedroom. Ray is sitting on the couch, one hand holding an open book, the other buried in the fur of the wolf lying beside him with his head in Ray’s lap. But Ray isn’t reading. He’s staring out of the window, motionless, and even Dief only reacts to Benton’s approach with a twitch of his ears.

Unable to think of anything to say, Benton just walks up to Ray and sits beside him. After a few seconds, Ray turns his head to look at him, but he doesn’t say anything either. After a while he sighs and leans against the back of the couch, his gaze moving past Benton to some point far beyond the corner of the room. He looks tired.

Benton places his arm on the couch so that his hand is resting against the back of Ray’s neck. After a minute in which Ray doesn’t move away from the touch, he starts to gently rub the cool, surprisingly soft skin, from the hem of his shirt up to the fine buzz of short hair that makes the shape of Ray’s head so elegant and vulnerable. For a long time they sit in silence.

After a while, Benton’s attention is caught by the book Ray is holding. It’s one of Benton’s, found on a giveaway stand for damaged copies on one of his first, long days after returning to  Chicago, when he had no work to do and Ray was keeping the distance between them unreachable with uncharacteristic politeness. He’d read this one before, naturally – a few times, even, but it’s a classic and he likes it, so he took it along.

Ray hadn’t made it further than the first few pages, however. Benton wonders how long he’s been sitting here, staring at nothing. He wishes he could tell if there I sa measure of peace in Ray’s silence that wasn’t there before. He hopes there is, but he doesn’t know and it breaks his heart.

It’s Benton who eventually breaks the silence. “Will you talk to me?” he asks, and his quiet words hang heavily in the room.

Ray looks at him. For a second, he looks so pained, so overcome by grief and self-loathing that Benton knows the answer before his friend opens his mouth.

“I love you, Benny,” Ray says simply, his voice a little rough but steady. “So the day I tell you everything is the day I eat my gun.”

There is so much in those words. Truth, probably, and that scares Benton enough to know that he will never press the issue. He nods silently and then says, because he has to, “I think you need help, Ray. You can’t do this alone.”

“I got you, don’t I? And Dief, useless paperweight that he is.” Ray’s eyes narrow in sudden suspicion. “Unless you plan on going back to Canada tomorrow?”

He specifies _tomorrow_ because Benton is going to go back eventually and they both know it. (For the first time he looks at the prospect with something like dread.) “Of course not. But there is only so much I can do. I was thinking more of professional help, someone you _can_ talk to.”

Ray tenses up. Benton is convinced he is going to get angry, but instead he looks sad. “I don’t think I can, Benny.”

“Maybe you should try. Just once. I’m quite frankly surprised the FBI hasn’t provided some support for you after your assignment.”

“Oh, they have. I went a few times, and it helped, but I don’t need any more than what I got so far.” It’s a blatant lie. Benton can see it – Ray has never received any help, and if it was offered at all, no one really pressed him. For a moment his anger at the FBI is almost blinding.

“Why did you even take that assignment?” he asks before he can stop himself; thinks, for a second, that it was a terrible mistake (they don’t touch the subject, ever), but Ray only looks a little pained and a lot surprised.

“Fighting bad guys who hurt a lot of people every day,” he says. “And I was the only one who could do it because some big name mafia asshole _just happened_ to look like me. So if I hadn’t done it, it wouldn’t have been done. I thought you’d approve.”

Benton does, in a way. It’s not like he isn’t proud of Ray for the sacrifices he has made in the name of duty and justice – or he would be if it weren’t for the idea that Ray might have done it because he thought Benton somehow expected it of him. That thought fills him with cold horror.

But then Ray sighs and looks away. “Truth is, I didn’t want to do it. I was too much of a coward to be quite that heroic about it.”

“Considering the risk it put you in, no one could have blamed you for saying no.”

“That wasn’t even it. I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of a terrible, drawn out death in case things went south, you know? But it was more than that. I’ve done enough undercover jobs before to know that you don’t come out of something like that the same person you were going in. And I did say no. They didn’t listen.”

“The FBI?”

“Yeah. I mean, I get it, actually. How often does it happen that a big name in the mafia dies without anyone noticing and there is another guy who looks just like him, same age, same voice, who also happens to be a cop with undercover experience? They couldn’t let that chance go.”

Benton has been wondering about that. He’s never seen pictures of Armando Langoustini, but the fact that Ray could pass for him in front of his closest friends and family without any sort of cosmetics raises questions he isn’t sure Ray has the answer to or even wants to ask. Unless Ray brings it up himself, Benton isn’t going to ask.

 “How did they get you to do it?” he asks instead. “Did they threaten you? Blackmail you?” He doesn’t know what there could possibly be for them to blackmail Ray with.

“Bribed me, more like,” Ray says with a little, self-depreciating laugh. “You give me too much credit. In the end I did it for the pay check. Turns out Armando and I weren’t so different after all.”

The answer is unexpected and entirely unsatisfactory. Ray may be many things, but never greedy. In fact, he has been most generous through all of their friendship, complaining about having to lend Benton money all the time but never actually asking to get it back (except that one time). The Mountie frowns, knowing there must be more to it.

Ray smirks at him and finally moves away from the hand caressing his neck. “Disappointed? I always told you I don’t live up to your illusions about my character.”

“Just wondering what you’re not telling me. I have never known you to be motivated by money to do something you don’t want to do.”

“Well, it was quite a lot of money. And living in Vegas as a very rich and powerful man. You come from my neighbourhood, that’s something that makes you think twice.”

“And yet you live like this.” Benton makes a movement that indicates the entirety of the small, old apartment with the cheap furniture they got in the first store they found.

“What can I say? It got old quickly.”

“Be honest with me, Ray,” Benton begs.  He can tell that Ray is trying to push him away again and he doesn’t understand why.

Ray sighs. He moves his hand to rub Dief’s belly and Dief rolls onto his back with a happy sigh, not caring at all about the words spoken around him.

And Ray doesn’t give Benton anything else. “There’s nothing to be honest about, Benny. It doesn’t get any better than that. That job ruined everything I ever managed to gain in life and I didn’t do it for love and justice or any of the other shit you would have done it for. Turns out my soul came with a price tag. And if you have a problem with that, I got enough left to buy you a ticket to Canada.”

“Stop this, Ray.” It makes Benton angry to hear Ray talk about himself like this, but he hopes it doesn’t show in his voice. “You can’t make me leave.”

Ray looks into his eyes and he is perfectly calm and serious when he says, “Yes, I could.” His voice is quiet. “There are things I could tell you that would make you turn away in a heartbeat. I’m just too much of a coward to actually do so.”

“You’re wrong, Ray. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done in Vegas because you clearly didn’t _want_ to do it. You’re still a good person. There is nothing you could tell me that would make me leave.”

Ray laughs. It’s an ugly sound that doesn’t suit him. “No, you just don’t get it, Benny. You’re too good a person to even image that kind of evil.”

And Benton is tempted, so very tempted to ask him to just tell him everything so Benton can prove to him beyond a doubt that it doesn’t matter, that he won’t look at Ray any differently, that he’ll still be proud to call him his friend. The words are already on his tongue but he remembers what Ray said earlier and refuses to break his vow not to push for answers within five minutes of making it.

“Why are you trying to push me away?” he asks instead. “Do you think so little of me that you believe I would abandon you here?”

“No, I just can’t stand you thinking too much of me.” Ray looks away again, his eyes hooded, but speaking with surprising honesty. “I can’t stand the knowledge that the only reason you’re not disgusted with me is because you don’t know who I really am.”

“The _assumption_ , Ray, not the knowledge.”

“No, Benny. You are assuming, because you don’t know.”

“That logic is more than flawed.”

“I don’t deserve your friendship, Benny. I shouldn’t have let you stay here. I should ask you to leave.” There’s something hard in Ray’s voice, but he also sounds sad. And tired. He should be sleeping at night, not sitting here alone, thinking dark thoughts. Benton himself found on more than one occasion that living is easier in daylight.

“You could do that. It wouldn’t have any effect.” He looks at Ray with as much open honesty as he can muster, and eventually, Ray looks away and lets out a little snort.

“Am I the only one who thinks this discussion is going nowhere?”

“No, Ray.” Benton smiles, trying to lighten the mood a little. “We seem to be pretty set in our respective views on a point that can’t be proven under these circumstances. Why don’t we call it a draw and go back to bed?”

“You do that, Benny. I’m coming in a moment.”

“No, you won’t.” Benton reaches for the book Ray is reading and his friend doesn’t protest when he takes it away. He closes it without marking the page. “Isn’t there anything that could help you sleep?”

“Reading _that_ might.” Ray nods in the direction of the book. “But no. Well, getting mindlessly drunk, but I’m trying to avoid that. And painkillers. The hospital doesn’t like insomniacs, let me tell you.”

“I don’t suppose that’s an option either.”

“No. I don’t have anything here.”

“But you were in pain yesterday.”

Benton thinks about Ray’s headache, but at his words, Ray’s hand goes to his chest in remembered pain. “Not too bad. I don’t want to have pills anywhere near me, and I don’t like taking drugs, or drinking. My family has a tendency towards addiction, you know. My father was an alcoholic, my uncle is an alcoholic, and I’m not even going to mention what Armando was into. Best not to push my luck. It was bad enough coming back.”

Benton nods like he understands. He doesn’t.

But he marvels at how they are having a normal conversation again, after Ray tried to push him out of his life just a few minutes ago.

“I think I might have an idea,” he says. “Something to help you relax, at the very least.”

“Yeah? That’s nice, Benny. But not tonight. The sun’s about to come up. There’s really no point in going to bed now.”

“No? I didn’t know either of us had anywhere to be in the morning.” Benton does have someplace to be, actually, but Ray doesn’t need to know that, and there no set time for it. It’s already overdue, in any case.

But Ray won’t be convinced, and Benton can _see_ that for all his exhaustion, sleep just won’t come to him tonight. So he turns on the TV, gets one of the woolen blankets from the bedroom and spreads it over both their legs and Dief, who protests and moves away, taking with him Ray’s source of warmth. That’s okay, though. Benton is there to replace his wolf, sitting close to his friend so the blanket will cover both of them as Ray tugs his cold feet under his body and begins to shiver as if he only now notices how chilly it is.

They watch some mindless morning show that is little more than background noise for Benton as he drapes his arm over Ray’s shoulder and runs his fingers over the soft material of the other’s shirt. Even though he got ready for bed hours ago, Ray isn’t wearing one of the silk pajamas his mother packed, but a loose sweater and sweat pants.

As time passes, he leans more and more heavily against Benton, slowly relaxing into his touch, but he never falls asleep, and when the first real daylight hits the window, he gets up and disappears in the bathroom for a shower. Benton lingers a little longer, feeling tired and drained. For a moment he feels as helpless as before, as if the past day and Ray’s determination to get better had been nothing but an illusion. But then again, he had known it wouldn’t be easy. Throughout the early morning, Benton had been able to tell whenever Ray’s thoughts were beginning to drift, and he had also noticed when he forced himself to focus on whatever was happening on TV again. He’s still trying. Long, bad nights are just something they will both have to learn how to deal with.

While Ray is in the bathroom, Benton quickly scrubs the kitchen sink and gets dressed. He folds the blanket, collects the book and places it back onto the shelf with a soft smile and a shake of his head. It’s the first part of Tolkien’s _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy, and Benton is not at all surprised it didn’t manage to sufficiently grasp his friend’s attention. While Benton himself has taken a lot of pleasure from reading the story more than once, it figures that Ray wouldn’t have the patience for the often dry and overly descriptive style.

Perhaps it’s a story best told by Benton himself, in a condensed form that focuses on the adventure and leaves out long descriptions of family trees and every hill in the Shire. Ray is probably going to like it, if it’s presented to him in a form that doesn’t annoy him.

Maybe Benton should tell it to him at night, to keep his thoughts off other things. Yes, he’s going to do that.

Feeling a little more hopeful than before now that he has a plan, however insignificant, Benton turns back to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.

 


	3. Chapter 3

After breakfast, Benton borrows Ray’s car with the vague explanation that he has to visit someone, and Ray doesn’t ask him who it is. Perhaps he thinks it’s Ray Kowalski, or perhaps he guesses the truth. Either way, he just hands over the car keys and wishes him a nice trip.

It begins to snow when Benton starts the motor. Usually, snow would make him feel nostalgic or even homesick. When he’s driving a car, however, he finds it annoying. He’s not a good driver in general, and a slippery road is the last thing he needs.

 _Everything_ about the day feels gray and slippery. It takes Benton half an hour to reach Octavia, and when he does, he lingers in the car for half a minute longer than he has to. He‘d seen the movement behind the curtain when he’d stopped the car in front of the house and imagines Mrs. Vecchio recognizing it and waiting for her son to get out. He hates having to disappoint her again.

But it’s not Mrs. Vecchio who opens the door for him, it’s Francesca. She must have a day off. Benton has not anticipated that.

But while she smiles at him somewhat shyly and coyly, she doesn’t show anything other than mild pleasure to see him. Her usual energy is lacking from her demeanor – in fact, she seems so subdued that Benton wonders if there is more going on for the family than just Ray’s considerable problems.

“I was going to tell you that my brother’s not here, but since you’re driving his car, I guess you already know that,” she says as she invites him inside.

Benton stands in the hall with his hat in his hands, feeling slightly awkward. “Yes. I came to tell your mother – that is, to let your family know that Ray is okay and that you don’t need to worry about him.”

“Then where is he? If he’s okay, he could at least call, if he isn’t going to show his face here. Instead he sends _you_. I don’t believe it!” Francesca sounds angry; it’s the kind of exasperation she often displays where Ray is concerned.

“He didn’t send me,” Benton explains. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Oh, so he didn’t even deem us worthy to hear from him! Yeah, Ma is going to be really happy to hear that! Take me to him, Fraser! I’m gonna teach him how to treat his family. Walking out on us like that, and then he doesn’t even have the decency to call, or write, or send a Mountie!” She stops herself, thinks that over, and smiles apologetically. “No offense, Frase.”

“That is not–” Benton clears his throat. “Ray is not strictly speaking ‘okay’ in the sense that he is fine.”

“So you were lying to me.” There is a flash of triumph running over Francesca’s face and Benton realizes he’s run into a trap. It also occurs to him that Ray probably did all he could to pull himself together around his family, to keep up a pretense of normalcy, and that his sister may have no idea just how bad it really is.

“I… not on purpose.” He didn’t. He hadn’t considered that Francesca might be lacking the context to evaluate his words. “Ray is okay in the sense that he is alive and healthy. I merely wanted to tell your family there is no reason to worry.”

Francesca’s eyes narrow in a way that reminds Benton of her brother. “Isn’t there?” She sounds suspicious and suddenly very serious. “Then why can’t he come tell us himself? Why can’t he even call? Ma is worried sick. This isn’t like Ray. He can be thoughtless, but he’d never do that to our mother.” She takes a step towards Benton, determination suddenly written all over her face. It makes her look more like the Francesca he knows. (He begins to realize that there are a lot of people in this city he only ever knew when their world was right.) “Take me to him,” she says, again. “I want to talk to him.”

“I can’t do that, Francesca,” Benton says regretfully. “Ray is… really not okay. Give him a little time. I’m sure he’ll talk to you as soon as he can.”

Francesca turns away, walks a few steps down the hall and back again. She looks frustrated, like a caged tiger. “No, that won’t do,” she decides. “I’m his sister. He can damn well speak to me.”

“Francesca.”

“If there’s one thing I have learned from my mother it’s that things are never so bad you cut out your family.”

“Francesca, it wouldn’t help. It would make things worse. Please, leave him alone until he’s ready.”

“And when will that be, huh? Whenever you two are done with your male macho thing and Ray remembers that he has a family who needs him?”

“Francesca!” Benton’s tone is taking on a hard edge that doesn’t sound like him. But he is afraid that it can only end in disaster if she goes to see her brother in this mood, or at all.

Now she flinches as if he had slapped her and Benton immediately feels bad. He never thought he would have to protect his friend from his own family.

“I’m sorry.” She sounds like she means it. “I mean, Ray’s not like our father, and you definitely aren’t.” She gives him a smile that lacks any hint of flirtation. “It’s just, I’m worried, okay? Ray isn’t supposed to do this to us. And I don’t know what to do. Ma’s freaking out like she expects him to turn up dead any moment and I don’t know how to make things better. That’s always been _his_ job. Maria has her own kids to deal with and Ma and I… I don’t think we’ve had a real conversation since I was fifteen. I mean, we talk, you know, but not about the important stuff. And suddenly it’s like Ray’s dropped all of this on me and I don’t have a guide book, you know?” She seems to realize that she’s rambling and visibly pulls herself together. “And I’m scared that he’s not coming back. I have another brother, you see. Freddy. We haven’t talked in years. I don’t even know where he’s living right now. I don’t think even Ma knows. I don’t think the family can take that again.”

“Because you need Ray to take care of everything.” Benton tries to keep his tone neutral and polite, but he finds it harder than expected and some of his disapproval must have leaked out, because Francesca looks surprised for a moment, before her expression darkens.

“Because we care about him.” She almost snaps. “We can take care of ourselves for a while if we have to, and it’s not like the money stopped flowing just because he’s not living here anymore. But he’s my brother, and I don’t want to lose him. Even if he is a pain in the ass sometimes.”

Benton nods his understanding and almost apologizes, but doesn’t, in the end. For all that the siblings bicker and fight, they do care about one another a lot, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that. But even though he believes Francesca when she says she’s worried about her brother, it’s also impossible to miss that she doesn’t understand what is wrong with him. Benton barely understands it himself.

The thing is, he doesn’t trust her not to lose her considerable temper around Ray and make everything worse. And even if she didn’t, seeing her, or anyone from his family, is obviously not something Ray is up to. Maybe he won’t be for a long time. It feels wrong, telling this woman he considers his friend to stay away from her own brother, but it also seems the right thing to do.

It’s hard to image Ray not being part of a tight family unit. So far, the image has always fascinated Benton, whose own childhood has been lonely for all that his grandparents were there for him. The idea of the easy familiarity and affection that comes with a big family has always appealed to him and Ray’s family, with all their disputes, petty conflicts and uncomplicated love has come to represent that idea for him. Now however, it’s a recipe for disaster.

“I understand,” he says, somewhat formally. “Will you tell your mother not to worry?”

“I can, but she’s going to worry anyway.”

“Tell her we ate all the food she sent and that it was delicious.”

“I’ll do that. I think she has more in the fridge for you to take along. Still cooks for one more, you know?”

Benton can imagine. He watches Francesca disappear in the kitchen and feels bad that he didn’t think of bringing back the empty boxes. He will do so the next time he comes.

It’s been only two nights since he turned up at Ray’s place, but Francesca returns with three large boxes full of food. Benton accepts them with a smile. Ray will know where he’s been when he sees them, but he probably suspects it anyway.

Or so Benton hopes. For the first time he considers the possibility that finding out might upset his friend, something he’s trying to avoid at all cost right now.

Still, he takes the boxes and turns to leave, turning his back to Francesca who’s biting her lips like she wants to say more. Benton can imagine that the conversation was dissatisfying for her. He’s sorry he couldn’t give her family more than this.

He reaches for the door handle but hesitates. There’s still one question he’d like to ask, but he doesn’t know how.

“My apologies, I know this is not an appropriate question to ask…” Which is why he hesitates even now. “But does you family happen to have any financial debts?”

Much to his relief, Francesca doesn’t get angry. Instead she snorts. “Are you kidding? Everyone has debts. You don’t pay for five adults, four kids and three cars on only two reliable incomes without the bank owning half of your house. But it’s nothing we can’t handle, if that’s what you mean.”

“I did, actually. Thank you, Francesca. I take it Ray’s pay is still coming in?”

“Yeah. I mean, he’s injured, he’s not been fired. Yet. They won’t do that, right? No, of course not,” she answers her own question. “Of course his pay is back to normal now the undercover thing is over, but it’s enough, even with the rent for his own place. We managed to save some when he was in Vegas, because contrary to what he believes, we do not notoriously spend every cent we get our hands on.”

“No one believes that, Francesca,” Benton assures her.

“Ha. You have no idea what my dear brother thinks of me. As if I alone was responsible for all the bills! But a house like this costs a lot of money even if you own it, let me tell you. And Tony hasn’t been employed an awful lot the year before Ray left. And two of the kids go to school now. You wouldn’t believe what you have to spend on that.”

“So I understand that your family has been struggling to pay the bills for a while?” Benton asks carefully.

She makes a dismissive gesture. “Listening to Ray, you’d think we were about to lose the house. But like I said, we get by no worse than any of the neighbors. I had a look at the accounts, now that Ray isn’t here to do it anymore, and they look stable enough. I have a good job now, you know. And even Tony has work, for however long that may last. You can tell my dear brother he doesn’t need to worry about us. And that he can move out of that neighborhood, it’s not going to ruin us. And it’ll help Ma sleep easier.”

“I’ll do that.” Benton smiles as if that had indeed been the reason he asked and finally leaves.

 

-

 

He only drives a little distance away from Octavia before he stops the car by the side of the road, because he needs to think and driving demands too much concentration (Although he never told them, he has always admired both Rays for their ability to navigate the traffic of Chicago while having a discussion about the appropriate time for Inuit stories and fighting off a doughnut-stealing lupine at the same time.)

The truth is, he has never thought about the cost of living in Chicago. It never really was a concern for him because his apartment‘s rent had been low and there hadn’t been much else for him to spend money on. What little furniture he had he got cheap or for free, so food was pretty much the only thing he regularly needed to pay for. And even there, his tastes are not exactly extravagant. The only time he had ever needed more than twenty dollar for his groceries was when he was cooking with Victoria.

What Francesca told him so dismissively does in no way mean that financial troubles really were the reason for Ray taking the job in Vegas. But Benton is convinced that it was at least a contributing factor, and that their situation has been a lot worse than Ray’s sister was aware of, or willing to acknowledge.

And theirs isn’t even a particularly good neighbourhood. It’s not bad, but it’s not one of the expensive areas either. Ray’s family isn’t rich; they never have been, and they probably never will be. As a detective Ray doesn’t make that much money. It’s enough under normal circumstances, but hardly sufficient for so many people, including a bunch of children. And Francesca hasn’t had a steady job until she started at the precinct after Ray left for Vegas. So there was Ray’s income, and sporadic money from whatever jobs Francesca and their brother-in-law could get. It’s hardly surprising it wasn’t enough.

Ray’s mother doesn’t work, never has as far as Benton knows. Neither does his sister Maria, who is busy raising four children. Where Benton comes from, the women have always worked along with the men, but he knows it is different for Ray and his family.

Francesca’s complaints about Ray leaving her alone to take care of everything angered Benton because she knows her brother is having a very hard time, and expecting him to come back so he can take care of all the family matters on top of everything else seemed incredibly selfish. Benton can see where she’s coming from, can understand that she feels left alone with a whole bunch of responsibilities she never had to deal with before, but she’s a capable young woman and certainly able to manage the bills and comfort her mother.

The problem runs deeper than that, though. While he never actively thought about it, Benton has always been aware that Ray comes from a very patriarchal environment – the fact that his father left the house to him and not to his mother is telling enough. So as the oldest son, it has always been Ray’s job to look after his family and take care of everything. Even now his family is relying on him.

In the face of that, it’s very plausible that Ray would take a job he knew could destroy him to make sure his family would be taken care of, that his mother and sisters and nephews wouldn’t lose their house and  home. It’s also not surprising that dealing with them is something Ray is simply not capable of at the moment.

The fact that they are all very loud and energetic and opinionated probably doesn’t help either.

Benton sighs, once again overwhelmed by the situation and the knowledge that there is very little he can actually do. In the cold car, underneath the gray sky, in the light of a day that seems to be already fading long before noon, he feels very alone.

He allows the feeling for about a minute, then he pulls himself together and starts the car. Instead of going straight back to the apartment, he drives to the 27th precinct, hoping to find Ray Kowalski at his desk.

He does, and even though he doesn’t stay long and has to decline the offer of lunch and a possible car chase with a notorious but incompetent kidnapper, he feels a little better afterwards.

Half an hour later he climbs the stairs to Ray’s place with three boxes of food and the hope that Ray is in, because he didn’t think to bring a key. But the door is open. Dief is lying on the couch, already eyeing his food bowl in happy anticipation of lunchtime, and Ray is sitting on the floor beside the low table, taking notes of some sort on a piece of paper. They should invest in a proper table and at least one chair, at some point.

“I ran into your sister this morning,” Benton says conversationally, which is not technically wrong, since he didn’t know Francesca had the morning off. He lifts the boxes to show them to Ray and hopes this gesture, along with his words, can be interpreted as “I happened to run into your sister on the street and she gave me these boxes full of leftovers that she just happened to carry with her.” He isn’t going to lie to Ray, but he also doesn’t want his friend to think Benton is doing things behind his back, which is exactly what he is doing, technically speaking.

Ray looks up and frowns at him, but it is a normal frown that says Ray is, as the Americans so eloquently put it, calling bullshit. He doesn’t seem angry, or hurt, just generally irritated in the way he used to seem irritated by pretty much anything Benton did. “You ran into my sister and she just happened to carry Ma’s food delivery for the poor?”

“Of course not, Ray. I would never have taken food meant for the poor. That would have been highly amoral.”

Ray hums his sceptical agreement and turns his attention back to his notes. A minute later, while Benton is busy trying to make room in the fridge between the groceries they bought yesterday, he asks, “How is she?”

“Francesca? Quite well, if I am not mistaken. She sends her love.”

Ray snorts, and it sounds a lot like his sister. “I bet.”

And that’s it, at least for the moment. Benton feels a little better while he organizes the kitchen and heats up the contents of the one box he couldn’t for the life of him fit into the fridge. He thinks about suggesting they buy a bigger one, and maybe a freezer. Then he considers the Vecchio’s finances, but concludes that it’s obviously not that bad anymore and that lack of money was not Ray’s reason for choosing this place. In the end he says nothing anyway, still not convinced Ray will stay in this place long enough to justify the expense.

He also makes a conscious effort not to pay attention to how much Ray is actually eating. None the less, he is as happy as Dief is disappointed when the better part of the food on Ray’s plate actually disappears in Ray’s stomach, and not in the food bowl on the floor.

They wait until Dief has eaten before they leave for Day Two of Buying Things, because the wolf wants to come along. This time, they go out to buy all the things they forgot the day before, like blinds for the bedroom window, and a reading lamp, and cutlery, because so far they have forks and spoons, but only one knife.

Dief is happy about being out, and so is Ray, or at least he successfully pretends to be. They aren’t out all that long, just about two hours, and as they drive back to the apartment, Ray is talking about ordering pizza for dinner and he’s talking mostly with his hands.

Benton smiles silently to himself, and Diefenbaker is moving restlessly on the backseat because he needs to be walked soon.

“Thanks,” Ray says somewhere in his speech about pizza.

“For what?”

“For going to see my family. I know I should have called them. I guess it’s important for Ma to know I’m not dead.”

“It is. But they understand. Don’t worry about it.”

Ray doesn’t reply. He bites his lips, though, clearly worrying about it. For a moment he looks incredibly sad. Then he makes a vague gesture and says, “Yeah, well,” and nothing else.

 

-

 

Sometimes Ray thinks that everything would be easier if it weren’t winter. There is barely any real sunlight anymore, and isn’t sunlight supposed to make you happy? It has something to do with brain chemistry and vitamin D, and he’s not going to mention it around Benny because Benny will jump at any opportunity to give a lecture. It doesn’t matter, anyway. All that matters is that Ray is somehow (sometimes) convinced  that things will get better if he only makes it through the dark months.

Luca Bartoli once said to him, in Vegas, that it was impossible to be sad in so much sunshine. Ray, who had been dealing with months of underlying terror at that time, could have told him something about that. In the light of that memory, the idea of summer doesn’t seem so appealing anymore.

But that doesn’t change anything about the fact that he misses the sun; that ever since he has moved out of his family’s home, the days have been far too short and the nights too long. He feels like the world is passing him by in eventless moments between one night and the next and somehow that makes it even harder to go out and do something to become part of it again.

It feels like time is running through his fingers, yet at the same time it seems to be standing still. It feels like winter is stretching on forever, like nothing at all has gotten lighter in ages. But then, winter had only just started when Ray moved here, not even two months ago. It isn’t even Christmas yet.

Ray sighs and rubs his eyes. The headache that never seems to go away is particularly annoying today and he has found that cold and wet air makes his lung hurt as if the gunshot wound was still fresh. He slumps in the chair and rests his head on the table, face hidden in his hand. Fraser isn’t here. For a few moments he’s allowed to acknowledge the quiet despair that lives in his joints and makes every movement an effort. (He doesn’t dare to truly let go, afraid he won’t be able to pull himself together again.)

They never talked about Fraser’s presence here. He just showed up that day and never moved out again, and most of the time Ray is glad he’s here. Other times he wants nothing more than for his friend to go away and never come back, and he always hates himself for that, but Benny would benefit from it and he hates himself anyway, so that doesn’t really matter.

There are times when Ray doesn’t know what he’d have done without the Mountie by his side. Other days, he feels suffocated by the other’s friendship and the knowledge that he doesn’t deserve it. This is one of the latter moments, when he wishes with all his heart that Benny would leave him alone and the words that would make him leave are on the tip of his tongue. He never says them, and sometimes he doesn’t even know if it’s cowardice or apathy that makes him keep his secrets.

He should probably get back to work at some point. But he’s on forced leave for at least another three weeks, and a part of him is glad about that. He doesn’t look forward to sitting behind a desk for the rest of his life, and the thought of having to deal with stressed cops and officials and criminals and just _people_ every day, or ever, fills him with quiet terror. He can barely even deal with Fraser. He can barely even deal with himself.

“You are so fucked up,” he mutters into his hands, except that it doesn’t sound like him at all. It sounds a lot like his old man.

He looks up when the door opens and Fraser comes in, Dief in tow. The two of them are returning from a walk through the neighborhood and Fraser’s face is flushed from the icy wind and the happiness of having been outside for a while. If Ray is going crazy in here, it has to be even worse for his friend. For a second, Ray is overcome by guilt and helpless affection.

He forces a smile onto his face and forces himself to stand up. He was supposed to prepare dinner, he thinks. Wasn’t he? He meant to, in any case. Maybe he and Benny didn’t actually talk about it, so it won’t look bad that he didn’t.

It’s only half past four anyway. Far too early to eat, not even Benny goes to bed that early. In fact, he’s been going to bed later and later these days, often holding out until after midnight, and Ray hates to think that his friend is staying awake so as not to leave him alone at night (and at the same time he feels immensely, shamefully grateful).

Dief eyes the open bedroom door. Ray isn’t going to close it, because leaving it open helps spread the meagre heat the apartment has to offer, but he looks at the wolf and says, “Don’t even think about it,” with as much authority he can muster. Dief is deaf, so he doesn’t care what Ray’s voice sounds like, but he turns and chooses to lie on the couch where he and his shedding are just barely tolerated during the day.

This whole place is covered in wolf hair, and Ray will never admit that he is secretly grateful, sometimes, that cleaning it gives him something to kill time with and be pissed about.

He lets his thoughts return to dinner. If he makes something with a long preparation time, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t start now. In fact, he should. In his mind, he goes through the list of things they have in the fridge and the storage cabinet. He just sorted everything last night, so he should be able to remember, but somehow, he can’t.

So he forces himself to get up, to investigate and to think about what he can do with what they have. It would be best if he drove to the grocer and got some additional stuff but the thought would be terrifying enough even if it didn’t mean coming into contact with and being seen by other people. No. Today that’s not an option. (Right now it feels like it won’t ever be an option again.)

The last thing he needs is another panic attack at the check-out counter.

Benny is talking about something. It must not be important, because he doesn’t seem to care that Ray shows no reaction to his words. A door opens and closes and then Benny has disappeared inside the bathroom. Apparently he also stopped talking, which is not something he always remembers to do.

Ray smiles a smile that’s only a little forced and tries not to groan while getting back up from crouching in front of the fridge. He’s rusty from not doing anything ever and his chest feels like something is tearing inside when he moves it too much in the wrong direction. Behind him he hears the quiet sound of paws on carpet moving away from him.

Fortunately, the open bedroom door means not only easy entry for misbehaved canines but also that Ray doesn’t have to move much for the Glare of Death. Dief walks straight over Fraser’s futon (no one can accuse him of having bad taste) and jumps onto the bed. He turns around himself once, sees Ray staring at him, jumps down again and trots back to the couch as if he weren’t a sneaky bastard who thinks Ray is an idiot.

When Benny comes out of the bathroom, Dief is pretending to be asleep (Ray isn’t buying it) and Ray is busy cutting the carrots he found in the back of the cabinet. There’s some corn in a can, a few slices of smoked bacon, tomato paste and rice. Hardly ideal, and Ray is by no means a skilled chef, but he’s too much his mother’s son not to have picked up a few culinary skills here and there.

There aren’t enough spices to work with, but that’s mostly his own problem. Benny doesn’t seem to mind bland food.

Now Benny comes over to help, because that’s what he does. Maybe this was the reason why Ray had intended to cook while his friend was walking the wolf. He isn’t sure. The kitchen lamp isn’t really bright enough which makes preparing dinner after dark a pain. That could also have been the reason. Ray’s head hurts and he thinks he might be willing to murder someone for a few hours of real sleep. The thought isn’t at all funny. If he went out and shot a few people other people would shoot him and that would solve all problems quite neatly. He hates cutting vegetables because it reminds him of cutting through other things.

A voice says his name as if from a great distance, and then a large hand closes around his wrist and it’s only then that he realizes without much interest that he has been cutting deep into the chopping board. Benny’s body is a solid wall of warmth behind him and Ray thinks that if the Mountie tries to take the knife away from him now he’s going to stab him. Or something.

Probably something.

But Benny doesn’t do anything while Ray tries to stop shaking. He desperately wants this man to go away so he can break down, but Benny stays right where he is and Ray forces his hand to unclench and his voice to sound normal as he assures his friend that he is okay now and that they can get back to work.

 

-

 

At night, Ray tries to sleep. He even goes to bed early, his head killing him and his eyes burning and feeling nauseous with fatigue. It doesn’t help. He lies there and sleep won’t come. What comes are the thoughts and the memories. Ray can’t even curl up into a ball and whimper because he’s pretending to be asleep for Benny’s benefit.

He waits until the other’s breath has evened out in deep sleep before he starts tossing around. It’s too frigging cold in this room; his feet are like ice. At least no one dropped bricks onto them. Ray itches for something to do, something to distract himself, but if he leaves the bed Benny will certainly wake up. He has effectively trapped himself.

Ray tries to concentrate on his breathing, the way Fraser taught him, but this must be a technique that only works for Canadians. At least it is tonight. Sometimes it works.

Sometimes Benny makes him lie down and runs his fingers over Ray’s scalp until he wishes he could purr like a cat to show his appreciation and tells him the story of that Hobbit guy who went on a quest with his friend to throw jewellery into a volcano. He has this way of talking directly into Ray’s ears with that really soft voice and somehow he always knows at which point of the story he needs to pick up again because Ray fell asleep the last time.

Tonight that is out of the question because Ray went straight to bed assuming he’d be asleep in seconds. (He’s been barely able to keep his eyes open while brushing his teeth.) By now, he should really have learned better.

The frustration at the prospect of another long, sleepless night comes with both desperation and anger and he can’t even scream.

It’s like Vegas, when he had to keep quiet in Armando’s ridiculously big house because he was never alone and everyone, even frigging Nero the butler, were constantly looking for any sign of weakness. Except the FBI guys had charming little pills for that made him sleep like dead if he really needed them. Towards the end, he had taken them almost every night and not even cared that it wasn’t only because they helped him sleep. (There’s a reason why he doesn’t use them anymore. Right now he wishes he could take them like he never does in daylight.)

In a way this is more like the long nights of his childhood when he couldn’t sleep for fear of nightmares and he didn’t dare move for fear of somehow attracting his father’s attention if he made the slightest noise. It wasn’t every night, of course, only when pop was drunk. Drunk and home. At least four nights of the week Ray didn’t even see him come home before Ma send him and Maria to sleep when they were very young, and looking back he doesn’t understand why he felt abandoned by that rather than relieved.

He remembers when he was older and would sneak into Frannie’s room at night to comfort her when she was crying. She probably doesn’t remember it over the dead hamster, but when she was four or five, it was him she would seek out if she skinned her knee or couldn’t find her favourite doll. Not Ma or Maria, and certainly not their father. (She probably doesn’t remember it, but the first time Ray had ever fought back against their father was after the first time Pop had slapped her across the face. He does remember because it had been her seventh birthday and she’d made the mistake of complaining when Pop had preferred to spend the evening out with his buddies.)

God, Frannie. She probably hates him now, for running out on their family like this. He’s just like Pop: not there. At least he doesn’t show up just to hurt them. Better not to show up at all.

And Frannie will manage. Benny told him she’s taking care of everything and while he would never have told her to her face, Ray knows she can do it. She’s grown so much while he was away. (She’s another thing that has changed.)

At some point in Vegas, Ray had come to the conclusion that while the way he and the rest of the family often treated her like she couldn’t get anything done by herself was unfair, she had also come to use it as an excuse for never doing anything. That had to change, he’d thought (in the back of an expensive car with a whiskey glass in his hand). Once he came back (if ever) he’d have a talk with her and he’d try to encourage her in the future even if every other thing she did annoyed the hell out of him the way little sisters did.

But when he came back she had already changed. And now he can’t even tell her that he’s proud of her. (Not that it matters now, because she doesn’t need him anymore.)

He thought about going to see his family, just for a few minutes, to let them know he’s okay and that he doesn’t plan on running out on them. He managed to live with them for weeks after getting out of the hospital, after all. But if he went there now, Ma would cry and everyone would yell at him and the kids… No.

He thought about calling, but it would probably end with him hanging up on them, and the next thing he’d know would be one of his sisters knocking down his apartment door. Actually, he’s surprised that hasn’t happened yet. He tries to convince himself that it’s because they respect his need to be alone, but doesn’t always manage.

He thought about writing them. It seems like the best way to go at this because it lets him keep control, but every time he so much as thinks about it, the words escape him and the pen threatens to fall from suddenly numb fingers. (He writes something else instead that isn’t for his family to read.)

Sometimes he thinks that Benny’s right; that he really should seek professional help. But the idea of talking about it only fills him with terror. It’s ridiculous, really, since he’s thinking about it all the time, even when he tries not to.

He turns around, curls up, and stares into the darkness. There’s still enough light in the room that after a while he can make out Benny’s shape on the futon below him. There’s something wrong with that, with Benny sleeping on the floor beneath him. He keeps thinking about how much Armando would have liked that.

Pop would have loved Armando. Big name in the mafia, rich, powerful, nothing soft to be found anywhere. He would have loved for Ray to be like that, and if he had the choice, he would have traded one for the other in a heartbeat. It’s kind of funny: All his life Ray has tried in vain to make his father proud, and now that he finally did, all he wants to do is puke. He can actually see the humor in that.

His quiet laughter wakes Benny up a minute later, and of course Ray manages to make him worry again because he tried to keep himself from making noise and now tears are running down his face and he can’t breathe.

 

-

 

The next morning, Ray has a check-up appointment at the hospital and he manages to go and act normal and never even once has the urge to shoot himself or anyone else. The waiting room is a challenge, since it’s crowded and contains, among other people, a couple fighting loudly over the point of going to see a doctor over this or that, a baby that won’t stop crying, and an elderly lady who keeps throwing him pitying looks that tell him just how bad he has to look after last night – bad enough to stand out in even this crowd. But he escapes into the restroom before it can really get to him and the shaking has stopped by the time he’s called in. On the way back he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry about the fact that at some point in his life this has become an accomplishment.

Once home, he downs half a pot of coffee and then accompanies Benny and Dief on their walk through the park they discovered a few blocks over. The sun is shining today and there’s only a light wind blowing. Benny tells him some inane story about a stakeout at a cabin near Yellow Knife, where he had to hide between the trees because any car or dog sled standing within two miles of the place would have been instantly suspicious, and he had to pay attention to the wind so it wouldn’t carry his smell to the suspect’s dog – that is, until Diefenbaker did his job and distracted the other dog so Fraser could change position and finally get a good look at the shed in the back where he suspected the poacher to skin his victims. Ray has no idea if that really happened or if Benny is pulling his leg so he keeps asking stupid questions, trying to make the Mountie give up his game.

After they get home, Ray lies down on the couch and falls asleep. He doesn’t dream.

 

-

 

A week before Christmas, Ray freaks out because he doesn’t have any presents for his family yet and he _needs_ to get them something. But the kids have grown so much since he’s lived with them, before Vegas, and he doesn’t know what they like now. His sisters are easier, and his Ma, that’s never been a problem and it never will be, but the kids. He loves his nephews and nieces, but he doesn’t even know them anymore. The youngest one didn’t even remember him when he came home from the hospital, and that stung, but at least she didn’t think Kowalski was her uncle. In this regard, Ray is glad that the undercover thing was so shallow on he Chicago side that Kowalski never even really had contact with his family while pretending to be him. Mostly, he’s sat at Ray’s desk and answered the phone with his name, and from what Ray has hear about it that was pretty much it.

(Come to think of it, it’s a miracle he made it through Vegas alive. The whole thing drew attention to his absence more than it covered it.)

Of course, there’s the thing where Kowalski got Ray’s partner along with his job, and then he kept both. Ray has gotten blackout drunk twice in his life and the second time was after he got out of the hospital the last time. He’d ended up there right back again after checking out AMA to help with the Muldoon case – something that had turned out to be a mistake when his lungs almost collapsed on him right there on the couch in Welsh’s office. The next thing he’d known, he was back in a hospital bed with a tube down his throat. And his family visited, and so did Welsh, and even Huey and Elaine, but Benny didn’t, even though the case was over. So Ray had asked and learned that Benny had decided to stay in Canada with his new partner, and Ray had just nodded and shrugged as if that made perfect sense. It probably did.

He is very aware of what he felt when Benny left him behind, when it became clear that Frannie wasn’t the only one who had moved on in his absence. What he doesn’t know to this day is how he felt when Benny came back.

Not surprising, then, that he hardly ever knows how he feels about Benny being here.

Right now, however, he’s grateful. Benny helps him pick presents for his sisters and keeps him company during Christmas shopping, which is stressful because of the overcrowded malls, but also strangely comforting in its familiarity. They are out all day, eating fast food at street corners and walking the streets in the early dark while groups of people young and old are singing Christmas songs, and when they get home, Ray sits down with aching feet and calls his sister.

Maria is surprised, to say the least. Ray can hardly blame her – after all, it’s been weeks since they last talked. He acts casual, as if calling them were something normal, and knows this can go two ways: either she’ll get the hint and play along, or she’ll get angry, which would be justified but not good.

Benny is in the bedroom, giving him some privacy. Ray is calm, he’s fine, but he knows that won’t last if she yells at him.

She doesn’t. It has to be some kind of miracle, but she doesn’t. He asks about the kids’ current interests and she answers his questions like it was normal for him not to know and everything is fine. Until she asks him if he’s going to come home for Christmas.

“I can’t…” He doesn’t even know what to say even though he anticipated the question. Talking to his sister is one thing, seeing her in person, and her kids, and everyone else, is something else.

On the other hand, he can’t hide from his family forever. Just like he can’t take sick leave forever and has to go back to work at some point. “I don’t know yet. I’ll try, but please don’t get Ma’s hopes up, in case something comes up.”

“Okay. I won’t say anything.” Maria is silent for a moment and in the gap, Ray tries to think of anything to say. But she’s faster. “Ray,” she says. “We really miss you, you know.”

“Yeah.” It’s a lie. He tries to believe it, but doesn’t manage. “I miss you, too.” That’s the truth, at least.

They end the call there, or at least _he_ ends it, hanging up too quickly. When it’s over he keeps thinking about all the ways in which he made a fool of himself, about all the things he could have worded better. Things he should have said but didn’t. Things he wishes he hadn’t said.

Benny comes out, looking clueless but his timing is too perfect. He probably listened in. Ray doesn’t blame him – the walls are thin and the only way _not_ to listen would be to cover his ears and babble. At least Benny doesn’t say anything. Or rather, he doesn’t say anything about the phone call. He keeps talking, for some reason, about squirrel stew.

They don’t eat squirrel stew for dinner. They eat Chinese take-out. And it’s okay. It’s all okay. Ray feels freaked out, but also happy, and it’s okay.

He wishes there were a non-lethal and non-addictive way to keep his brain from working.

They watch TV during and after dinner. Ray sits on the couch leaning into Benny and Benny does that thing with his hands that gets Ray to relax nine times out of ten. Ray drifts for a while, thinks absurd thoughts about how Fraser would make him millions on the pharmaceutical market. “I really love you, you know,” he says when he is too tired not to. “Don’t know how I’ll manage when you’re gone.”

Benny is silent for a while and Ray is too tired even to wonder what he has said to cause that. Eventually, Benny says, “I have called my superiors in Canada a week ago and asked them to extend my leave. I won’t be gone for quite a while yet.”

A rush of warmth runs through Ray at the admission, though as always it comes with uncertainties. He ignores those and focuses on the sad but inevitable certainty instead. “I appreciate that.” He doesn’t open his eyes. “But eventually you’ll go back, no way around that.”

Again, Benny is silent, though not as long. “I have been thinking,” he finally admits. A dangerous start. Ray wonders if he should make an effort to look at his friend’s face but doesn’t. He can imagine it, anyway: carefully neutral. “You could come with me to Canada. For a more permanent arrangement.”

Ray still doesn’t open his eyes. Benny doesn’t stop the movement of his fingers. If Ray just let himself drift off to sleep he would get out of having to reply to that, he thinks, but that wouldn’t be fair to Benny after everything he’s done.

The thing is, he’s thought about it. So far it’s been a purely hypothetical thought because he didn’t want to impose on Fraser even more than he already does, but now that Fraser himself has offered, it’s suddenly become a real possibility that needs a real decision.

“I’d love to, Benny,” he says, because he already knows what that decision will have to be. “God knows I do.” Canada. Some cabin in the middle of nowhere and no people to deal with other than Benny, and everything would be so very, very far away. “But I can’t run away like that. There are things I need to do here.”

“I understand.” Benny doesn’t sound disappointed. He doesn’t sound like anything. And he doesn’t seem to understand either, because after a brief pause he asks, “What is it that you need to do here that you can’t do there?”

“Look after my family? I know I’m not doing a great job of that now, but I’ll get there.” Ray speaks with a determination he isn’t really feeling. To ‘get there’ he’ll need it. A lot of it. “And, oh, there’s the thing where I have a job here and not in Canada.”

“Work can always be found in Canada. And if I’m not mistaken there is the option of early retirement due to your injury.”

And damn, it sounds like Benny actually _wants_ him to come, like he would really be sad if he didn’t. Ray doesn’t know how he feels about that.

And then there is the matter of taking the retirement option. It’s not like Ray hasn’t thought about it. And it’s not like his family is going to fall apart without him here. But running away to Canada would feel too much like doing exactly that: running away. It would mean admitting defeat, admitting that he can’t make it here anymore.

Ray finds himself unable to put that into words.

“I haven’t failed my job yet, even if it’s going to be behind a desk,” is what he eventually says. “I’m not going to give up before I do.”

“In that case, I will have to go to Canada on my own, I suppose.” Benny sounds like he’s smiling. Ray wished he had his confidence. He wishes Benny didn’t have that kind of confidence in him.

“I guess,” he agrees vaguely and gives up on the thought of finding any rest tonight.

 

-

 

In order to avoid another night like the one a week ago, Ray finally talks Benny into taking the bed when they turn in. It gives him the opportunity to get up and out of the room any time he likes without fear of waking his friend if Ray slept on the futon, he argues. Benny argues back that he doesn’t mind being woken if Ray leaves but seemes to realize Ray wouldn’t do it anyway. In the end, he gives in.

Which is why Ray is able to get up and leave the room without Benny so much as stirring when he opens the door. Dief, sleeping on the couch, wakes and lifts his head at the intrusion. He looks hopeful. For him, Ray’s insomnia means getting his ears scratched all night, so he’s okay with it.

This night is no exception. Ray sits down with a book (some well written but highly inaccurate crime story that distracts him much better than any fantasy story that reads like a history account and is much better told by Benton-Master-of-Random-Inuit-Stories-Fraser anyway. Nothing derails his morose focus like wrongly described police procedures.

Benny said a neighbor gave him the paperback (of course Benny became friends with all their neighbors within a week while Ray wouldn’t be able to recognize any of their faces if they met on the street) but maybe he got it on purpose. But that, that would mean he had to know what it was about, and the idea of the Mountie having read mindless – and wrong – crime fiction at any point in his life is bordering on the ridiculous.

Where Ray left off the last time, the detective in the story just had to let go three suspects because they had all confessed the same crime, which apparently meant none of them could be prosecuted for it in the universe of the novel. He tries to get back into it, or just back into the urge to bang his head against the wall and then write a letter to the author, but tonight it’s not working. Tonight he feels so restless that he actually has the irresistible urge to move.

He looks outside the window, where it’s dark and utterly silent. The clock in the room has long since been covered by a cloth so he can’t tell the time without uncovering it, but he doesn’t even _want_ to know the time. ’Middle of the night‘ is precise enough for him.

Strangely enough, he has the urge to play basketball. It’s actually something he’s done every now and again in the past, when the nights were too long and he was too full of restless energy. He’d go to the basketball court two streets over and score points against himself until there was no energy left. But that was in a different neighborhood and before he had a bullet in his lung. Tonight, a walk will have to do.

To his surprise, Dief slips out with him. “If you think I’ll spend the entire walk scratching your ears, you’re mistaken, buddy,” Ray tells him, but Dief is already running ahead and doesn’t listen. Maybe he just really has to go. If Ray were a dog, the first thing he’d do is learn how to use a toilet, so he wouldn’t be forever dependent on someone with thumbs to open the door for him.

The cold night air hits Ray like a punch in the face. They air the apartment at least three times a day because the small rooms get stuffy quickly with to grown men and a wolf breathing inside them and Benny might die if he has to go more than five minutes without fresh air; it still didn’t prepare Ray for just how cold it would be this time of night. It’s very refreshing, actually, even as he shivers and tries to crawl deeper into his coat.

Dief, who has fur and the word ‘arctic’ somewhere in the name of his species, seems happy enough. He stays close to Ray, not running ahead but trailing along by his side, which leaves Ray with the responsibility of picking a direction. He ends up aiming for the park they sometimes visit during the day, which tells him everything he didn’t need to ask about his self-preservation instincts.

But the park is deserted. And no one thought to cover the paths with sand, leaving them slippery death traps. Dief seems to enjoy them quite a bit, and Ray doesn’t really mind. He walks just beside them, where the snow is higher and keeps him from losing his footing. The wind is stronger here, without the protection of the buildings, making his cheeks and nose burn. For a few moments, Ray takes off his hat to get some air on his scalp, but his ears don’t thank him for it and the hat goes back on.

He’s wide awake and feeling strangely exhilarated. Dief picks up speed, shuffling left and right, sniffing trees and benches and random spots on the ground as if he hadn’t done the exact same thing two days ago. He happily uses this chance to mark everything all over again before all the other dogs show up. No wonder he was so eager to come.

After a while, Ray starts to pick up speed, too. His coat isn’t very long and doesn’t hinder him and he’s wearing sensible shoes for this weather, never once slipping or twisting his leg on the uneven frozen ground hidden underneath the snow. There’s too much energy in him and it feels good to finally let it out, let it leave a trail in the snow.

Dief woofs once and starts running beside him. And before him. And behind him. Like an idiotic, overgrown puppy. He’s probably wondering what made Ray  move as he usually avoids running unless he’s chasing criminals or his car. But he seems to enjoy it, and so does Ray. His lungs are burning in the icy cold air and pain spikes through his chest with every breath but he ignores both for far too long. When he finally stops it’s because he literally can’t go on.

The thought of just sinking into the snow and lying there for a while is almost too tempting to resist. It’s Dief’s warning growl that keeps Ray from doing just that. The wolf probably knows better than him how high the chances are of not getting up again, but Ray has been confronted with enough homeless people frozen to death outside of shop entrances to have an idea of how stupid that would be. He thinks about Benny and decides to go home.

It’s going to be a long walk back, and now, with sweat leaving his body even more vulnerable to the cold and every breath hurting his lungs, coming here doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. Ray still doesn’t regret it. They walk back slowly, needing almost an hour, and Ray doesn’t once think of anything that’s been buried in the desert.

By the time he sneaks back into the apartment, he’s half frozen. Even inside the fabric of his gloves, his fingers are like ice. Diefenbaker also seems to have had enough of the cold. He lies down in front of the heater, soaking up whatever amount of warmth the thing is willing to offer.

Only now that he’s inside does Ray realize how cold he really is. A hot bath would be great, but he doesn’t have a tub, and besides, the sound would wake Benny. If he hasn’t woken already. Ray hesitates after taking off his coat and gloves, looking over at the closed bedroom door. Then he looks around in the room. If Benny had woken up, found them gone and decided to look for them, he would have left a note in case Ray and Dief got back before him. The exact thing that Ray should have done in case Benny woke up and worried.

Ray bites his lips, still looking at the closed door. Eventually he gives in and carefully opens it. The room behind it is dark, but in the light falling in through the door, Ray can see Benny lying on his side, one arm stretched out as if in invitation, sleeping peacefully. He breathes out a soundless sigh of relief.

Somehow, the bed looks a lot more comfortable when Fraser is lying in it. Maybe it’s just that thing Benny does, where he makes everything he touches better somehow. Looking at it now makes Ray realize how tired he is, and how cold. Benny looks wonderfully warm.

For a second, Ray is tempted to just climb into bed with his friend, cuddle up to him and take some comfort in his warmth and his presence. Benny wouldn’t kick him out, he knows, would probably not even mind. But as much as imagines it as a place of comfort and safety, Ray isn’t fool enough to actually try. It would be a very bad idea. And the more he thinks about it the more he feels that he wouldn’t be able to bear it for so many reasons.

He forcefully shakes off the thought before his memories can turn to dark places again and closes the door as quietly as he can. He’s going to try to sleep, but not on the futon. It looks too hard and cold from where he’s standing, and Benny is far too close.

 

-

 

Christmas is going to be a problem. Benton has been aware of this for a while now, but on Christmas Eve he can no longer deny that it is a problem that is very real and very immediate. Unfortunately, there is nothing he can actually do to solve it. All he can do is wait and hope everything plays out more or less alright.

Dief has been running through the apartment all week looking for his present, but Benton had anticipated that, of course, and since Ray’s apartment doesn’t offer many places to hide things, he left it at Turnbull’s now empty place. He actually did that weeks ago, when he went there to get the small table and single chair that now stand next to the living room window. Dief suspected nothing. Right now, he seems to suspect that he has been forgotten, which would explain his singularly bad mood today.

Ray is mostly nervous, and Benton is mostly lost. He gets the impression that this year’s Holiday is going to be a test of everyone’s endurance rather than a reason for celebration, but he’s also hoping that he can help make it at least a little bearable.

Dief’s mood doesn’t improve the situation, but it’s not the only problem. There is, for instance, the question of where Benton is going to spend Christmas Day. He has been invited by the consulate, by Ray Kowalski and the 27th precinct, and of course by Ray’s family the last time he saw them. The words “Bring Ray,” were passed unspoken, but that is not something Benton needs to worry about because Ray decided to go of his own volition. It still leaves _him_ without a place to be. On the one hand, he wants to support his friend in case things get out of control, on the other hand, he doesn’t want him to feel smothered.

Ray eventually takes that decision out of his hands by telling him to go to the precinct and keep his other Ray from feeling abandoned. He says it like a joke but Benton knows that it’s actually a real possibility, and it has been something he worried about. Ray Kowalski has been remarkably understanding so far, but Benton doesn’t want him to start feeling like he doesn’t matter anymore.

So Benton will go to the 27th for a while. It’ll be nice seeing everyone again, and it will be a good opportunity to hand over the present he so painstakingly picked out for his friend. Diefenbaker’s mood improves considerably at the news because attending a party thrown by American police officers comes with the prospect of a lot of leftover fast food. (One of Benton’s Christmas presents for his canine friend will be that he’ll reduce his criticism of Dief’s eating habits by half.)

Ray will drop him off there on the way to his family’s house, and he’ll pick him up when Benton calls him. Which offers another dilemma as Benton doesn’t expect Ray’s visit with his family to take all that long, but maybe all goes well and his call would disturb them.

He has never before felt bad about calling Ray at an inconvenient time, but this time he would. He would also feel bad for calling too late.

In the house of Benton’s grandparents, Christmas was usually acknowledged with a particularly good meal and a present or two in his stocking over the fireplace. The presents were almost exclusively books – by the time he was ten he had stopped telling his grandparents what he wanted, knowing he would be ignored, but at least they tried to pick books relevant to his interests. Or what they thought his interests should be.

And then there were the few winters when he spent Christmas Eve at the house of his friend Mark Smithbauer. Mark’s grandparents had come from Germany and kept up their country’s tradition of celebrating on the 24th, so Benton got to enjoy two celebrations in a row, the first of which actually _felt_ like Christmas, with songs and a decorated tree and a big meal Mark’s mother had spent hours preparing.

He’s always enjoyed that, but it also left him with a deep feeling of loneliness when he thought about his own father, out there hunting criminals instead of celebrating with his son, and his own mother, whose face and voice had already faded from his memory. His grandparents loved him and did their best, but they were such reclusive people that Benton needed more than a decade after leaving them to realize the company of others is something he actually enjoys.

When he first came to Chicago he dreaded the festive days and the loneliness they would inevitably bring when all his friends left to be with their families. When Christmas finally came, of course, he spent most of it in the car with Ray, trying to keep a well-meaning but desperate father from making a terrible mistake. It had worked, which did make Benton feel a lot better about the day, true. He still didn’t feel _good_ about it until Ray simply took him along to have dinner with his family and enjoy the rest of the celebration with them.

Mark Smithbauer’s home had not prepared him for the lively clutter, noise and love of a Christmas with the Vecchio family, which included not only Ray’s siblings and nephews but also uncles and aunts and a bunch of cousins from the neighborhood. Benton had found himself quite overwhelmed, but happy, despite the continued advances of not only Francesca but two of her cousins as well.

He can see how it would be entirely too much for Ray this year.

Ray seems to think along the same lines; he’s quiet all day. Not obviously depressed or terrified, but quiet and restless. At some point in the past two years he has learned to hide his fear so well that even Benton can’t immediately see it, though, so there is nothing reassuring about the lack of panic.

In the afternoon, when the sun is already low on the horizon, Ray accompanies Benton and Dief on a stroll through the park. There are few other people around, most of them walking their dogs. It’s peaceful, calming; yet the gloom of falling darkness makes the whole world feel strange and uneasy at the same time.

Ray doesn’t seem to mind. He seems calmer here, less nervous, but it’s hard to tell for sure with his face mostly covered by the thick scarf Benton insisted he wear because he has been plagued by a painful sounding cough for the last couple of days. Ray’s mother would be heartbroken if he couldn’t come because he fell ill on Christmas Day, he had pointed out, and there was really no argument Ray could offer against that.

Dief happily walks ahead of them, following the recently sanded path. There is a frozen-over pond that the wolf, probably remembering how he lost his hearing, wisely stays away from. Sometimes he will stop and look back at them to share a meaningful look with Ray that leaves Benton a little suspicious.

At some point, Benton realizes that he and Ray are holding hands.

The realisation comes with a little jolt, but no further reaction. He can’t tell if it was him who took Ray’s hand or if Ray took his, or if indeed Ray even notices what they are doing. It is very cold, after all, and their hand are covered in thick gloves and maybe Ray’s fingers are numb with cold and he doesn’t feel the pressure of a palm pressing against his.

That seems unlikely. In the end, Benton doesn’t say anything, and if he smiles a little wider, it could just as well be because of the good weather and the anticipation for the wonderful dinner that is waiting for them at home. It feels natural anyway.

He thinks right now he might be happy.

 

-

 

Judging from all Benton knows about Christmas in Italy, he was not surprised to learn that Ray’s family has a big, rich dinner on Christmas Eve. They have been in the United States for generations and many traditions have fallen by the wayside, but Ma Vecchio would never miss an opportunity to overfeed her children and grandchildren and anyone else who happens to be around, and for all Ray tells him, neither did his grandmother.

Benton wonders if his friend would rather be with them tonight. It’s quite possible, but also not an option at this point. And Ray doesn’t seem unhappy at all when the two of them stand in the very small kitchen and work on their dinner together. Ray has gotten the ingredients for traditional Italian food favoured during Christmas time and Benton has gotten the ingredients for a typical Canadian dessert. It will probably clash terribly and he doesn’t even mind.

It reminds him of the first night he spent with Victoria after their reunion, now years in the past. This kitchen is even smaller and they bump into one anther a lot, but there is nothing awkward about it. Ray seems to enjoy himself, moving with certainty and his natural, fluid grace as he juggles cutlery and playfully shoves Benton out of the way. After a while Benton gives up what little space he occupied with some regret and just watches.

For a while everything is almost normal again, like the days before Ray left for Las Vegas, with banter and easy intimacy and a sports game running almost completely muted in the background. But this time around Benton is aware how all-encompassing his love for Ray really is, and now he knows that this moment won’t last. It makes it all the more precious, but wistful and a little lonely, too.

The problem is not that Ray doesn’t love him back, because Benton knows he does. The problem is that it changes nothing. Ray isn’t ready for anything more than friendship between them. Maybe he never will be. Maybe he never has been, even before he left, due to how he was brought up and all the ways this society damages a person. Fact is that at this point, he is simply too broken.

It might not be forever. Benton hopes with all he has that it isn’t, and he knows Ray is trying, which is the most important thing in this situation. Right now, however, standing there in the dim light of the kitchen lamp and television, spending a relaxed evening together, is all there can be, and he’s going to enjoy this moment for what it is.

When Ray is done with his part, Benton takes over in the kitchen to finish their dessert. When Ray walks past him, Benton lets his hand brush against the other’s for a moment, and Ray turns his palm so that their fingers entwine. Neither is looking at the other and neither acknowledges what has happened. From his place on the couch Dief sighs, but if he has any further opinion as to what is going on, he keeps it to himself.

While Benton is busy mixing his dessert until it has the right consistency, Ray sets the table. The place doesn’t offer much by way of decoration but he makes do with a folded sheet as a table cloth and two of Benton’s emergency candles in an ashtray, which he places on the narrow windowsill because there won’t be any space for it on the table once the dishes are served.

It’s a tight fit. It’s quite the hassle, actually, and Ray almost spills the sauce all over the table when he tries to make the plates fit because they don’t have the right containers for anything, but in the end they make it work. The game on the television is over by the time they are ready to eat and Benton changes the station to one that plays music. Christmas songs seem to be in season at the moment. They sit on their mismatching chairs, one borrowed, one found, and drink orange juice out of beer glasses.

“You know, when I was a little boy, we used to do this,” Benton says. “Me and the other kids from school – we were about five boys and girls at the time, counting the older ones – we would steal our parents’ tablecloths and cutlery and set up a place like this in the back of an old barn, pretending to be adults from the big city like on television. The older ones would even try smoking. It smelled terrible and they didn’t like it, but they kept trying anyway.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” Ray smiles thoughtfully over the rim of his glass. “Playing adults?”

“I think every adult is playing adult to some extent,” Benton tells him. “It seems there is no guidebook how to do it beyond paying your bills and going to work instead of school.”

Ray nods. His eyes have turned soft; it’s a look Benton likes on him and hasn’t seen in ages. “It always amazes me that despite being freakishly smart and having grown up in the middle of nowhere with polar bears, you were just a kid like everybody else. And maybe still are.” He smirks, but there is no trace of malice in it. “We used to do the exact same thing, my siblings and me. When we were really young – like, when Frannie was so young she’d just crawl around the floor and chew on stuff and Freddy was that clingy toddler that would never let go of Ma’s apron – Maria and I had this secret place in the attic. Well, we used to take stuff from the kitchen, the living room, and sometimes when Ma needed it, it would just happen to reappear there, so I guess it wasn’t all _that_ secret. Anyway, one of the games we played was, you know, being an adult. We’d dress up and form sets out of all the clutter and just copy what we saw on TV like that was anything like real life.” He’s remembering the past with a little smile on his face, but there is something dark lurking underneath that smile when he adds, “But really, I only ever wanted to be like my dad. I tried to be like him. Or maybe like I wanted him to be, like I thought he was when he wasn’t, you know.” He shrugs. “Back then, I only ever wanted to be the son he would be proud of. Be like him – guess I finally managed that.”

“You’re nothing like your father.” Benton takes Ray’s hand without even thinking about it. “You’re better than him. You always will be.” He hasn’t heard all that much about Ray’s father, but the only remotely positive thing was that he was good at pool. Even if he had heard nothing at all about him, he would have wondered about the man that left Ray so damaged in so many ways.

Ray’s smile says he doesn’t believe it, but the words that come out of his mouth are, “Well, I know at least one thing he isn’t proud of.” He returns the squeeze of Benton’s hand and for a second his grin looks almost (but not entirely) real. “Anyway, that’s not what I was going for. The point I was trying to get to is that growing up I had this mental image of what adults are like. As a little boy I kind of expected everyone to turn that way once they hit eighteen. Become all responsible and smart and have an answer to everything. And then I grew up and I started to wait for that moment to come when I would be like that, and I’m still waiting.”

“I suppose a fundamental part of being an adult is accepting that there is no such thing,” Benton tells him. At least, he has never met someone like that. He used to think his father was a model of a strong, responsible grown-up when he was little, and now he knows so much better.

In his defense, his father had waited until after his death to destroy his son’s illusions, but then, he was hardly around enough to do so while he was still alive. (Benton misses him sometimes, now that he has moved on.)

“So Peter Pan needn’t have worried?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Benton takes the first bite of his dinner and makes a happy sound. “This is very good, Ray.”

Ray smiles, pleased, and digs in himself. He may not be as good a cook as his mother but it’s obvious that she made her son help in the kitchen more than once. It really _is_ very good, even though Ray has a little frown between his brows at first, apparently finding something lacking. Benton, not knowing what it is _supposed_ to taste like, sees no reason to complain.

Unsurprisingly, Ray doesn’t eat all that much. He never does, though he has become somewhat more reliable in eating at all. At least he doesn’t look at his fork as if every bite were a challenge. Benton knows that lack of appetite and energy, had experienced it himself after Victoria, when he became more and more aware that she was lost forever. For a while every meal, every smile, every friendly word was forced. Especially towards Ray. Because Ray was the only one who was always there.

Even then he was aware how unfair it was to mourn for a woman who wanted to destroy him and had harmed those he loved by resenting a man who had been nothing but loyal to him and never even blamed him for trying to leave with her, but that was what his heart did.

In the end, what Benton learned during those long, dark days was that his heart couldn’t be trusted. He _knew_ Victoria was not the person he wanted her to be, he _knew_ she was like poison to him, and not above hurting innocents to get what she wanted, but it changed nothing. He still loved her with an intensity that made life without her seem unbearable. She was obsessed with both her revenge and her love for him, but he was just as obsessed with her. Enough to leave Dief for the woman who had tried to kill him. Enough to leave Ray with a mortgage on his house he couldn’t repay and the prospect of losing his job andhis freedom over a crime he hadn’t committed. Enough to spit on everything he used to hold in such high regard.

And Ray knew all that and was still there for him at the end of it. Benton was never entirely sure how well Dief understood what had been going on with him, but he probably knew as well. One of the reasons why Benton had such a hard time accepting Ray’s unconditional friendship back then was – beside the pain and frustration of being stuck in a hospital bed and the fact that he’d lost the woman he loved forever – the fact that he didn’t deserve it.

So Benton has an idea how Ray feels now, even though he doesn’t know any details. Unfortunately, he has no idea how to convince Ray to tell him because Ray believes he cannot be forgiven and refuses to talk. At least Ray had known exactly what Benton was about to do on that train station, so there was never any doubt about that.

Nowadays, when Benton remembers Victoria, it’s not with desire and longing but with wistfulness and shame. She nearly ruined him, but only because he let her. And maybe that obsession with the _idea_ of her stemmed from a combination of the circumstances under which they met, and the guilt over how they parted, and the dangerous What Could Have Been if he had let her go all those years ago, but it was still a part of him. He’d noticed it again, during his brief infatuation with Meg Thatcher. The moment she was in danger he could think only of following her kidnappers, regardless of the danger the unconscious Mounties and the city were in, and regardless of the fact that she was neither incapable nor helpless. And while that romance passed uneventfully and lacked the fiery passion he’d felt for Victoria, he can’t deny that there is something profoundly wrong with him that becomes evident the moment the falls in love.

Perhaps it has something to do with his upbringing, or with the isolated way he spent his adolescence that has him latch onto anyone he has feelings for without any kind of middle ground. Whatever the reason, Benton knows he can’t trust himself when he’s in love, and the only thing that saved him so far was the fact that he doesn’t fall in love easily. He has met women – and men – he was very fond of, but it never felt like love. It felt like settling, and letting them go has never been hard.

(Or maybe he has just gotten stuck on the harmful impression that real love was _supposed_ to be destructive.)

Ray is entirely different. Benton loves him and has for a long time, but there never was the overwhelming desire and passion he felt for Victoria and, to a lesser extent, for Meg. One day, while they were sitting in the Riv, Benton looked at his friend and realized that he loved him, desired him even, and it was like acknowledging that the sun came up in the morning. It felt natural and right and it didn’t scare Benton at all, because he had not lost his mind over it so far, and because he knew that if he ever did, Ray would never use that against him.

“Hey.” Ray’s voice pulls Benton out of his thoughts. “Look.” He points outside, where snow has once again begun to fall after a day that has been sunny and dry. The orange light of the streetlamp makes the snow glow in a way it never did in the remote area Benton grew up in. He finds he quite likes it; that this dirty, loud and impersonal city can create little islands of quiet beauty in the darkness.

Diefenbaker doesn’t care about that. He has eyes only for the table and the food. It’s no surprise unsuspecting strangers always end up giving him snacks. He has that starved look down to an art form.

When Benton voices those thoughts, Ray just snorts in reply. “Yeah, or maybe they are afraid he’s going to eat them if they don’t hand over the snack. Because he’s a wolf, and normal people are scared of wolves.”

“Now, Ray, there is much less reason for it than commonly assumed. The arctic wolf is subject of so many misconceptions.”

“Yes, _common_ misconceptions. Which means that the common man is scared of wolves.” Ray gets up in a fluid motion and glares at the wolf. “I  know your game buddy. Don’t think you can have my dessert. Here, you can have the leftovers.” He actually manages to make it sound like Dief got a bad deal here, and Dief actually manages to look indignant for about two seconds. Then he wanders over to his tray and inhales everything Ray didn’t eat.

Benton helps his friend clear the table. The frying pan is still half filled and Ray shakes his head when he looks at it. “I’ve turned into my mother,” he laments. “I’ve cooked enough to feed an army.” He grimaces. “Or one wolf.”

“It’s not that bad,” Benton assures him. “If you were like your mother, you would have made me take seconds until there was nothing left. And she would never suffer a canine eating in the kitchen.”

“Oh, keep your precious delusions.” Ray laughs. “What do you think Dief does in my Ma’s kitchen whenever you’re not looking? She may seem tough as nails, but she fell for his charm like a tree in a storm, thirty seconds flat.”

Benton sighs. He didn’t know that, but it’s possible that there was a certain amount of willingness in his ignorance. When it comes to Dief, he has learned to choose his battles and fight those that are not only more important but also have a chance of going somewhere. So instead of letting it come down to a real battle of wills on the Dief-and-food business, he concentrates more on the problem of Dief-and-litters (although he does have one very good argument for a permanent solution that always seems to do the trick). On the other hand he can’t just let his lupine companion believe he accepts his unhealthy eating habits and rude manners, so he occasionally chooses to pretend he doesn’t know about things just so he doesn’t have to act.

Benton wonders if he can get away with just pretending he doesn’t know what Ray just revealed and  in the end, he decides it is a problem he is willing to postpone to a later date, or at least until after dessert. The table is a lot less cluttered now, allowing them to see the spots where they spilled sauce and juice on the sheet, but Ray places the bowl and the deep dishes so that they cover almost all of the stains. The candles go from the windowsill to the table as well, and their orange juice is replaced with sparkling water. Ray actually offered to buy wine for the occasion, but neither he nor Benton are all that keen on drinking.

The whole thing is charmingly improvised and Benton loves it for that. On the other side of the table, Ray proves to him that he held back on dinner to leave room for the dessert, and he really seems to like it, which honestly pleases Benton who rarely cooks for anyone other than himself and Diefenbaker and pretty much never indulges on desserts.

They clean up together, and for a moment Benton feels reminded of both Victoria and his grandparents. It’s mainly the thought of his grandma and granddad, however, that leaves him feeling a little sad, missing them, and in that moment he realizes he’s over her.

The realization hits him so suddenly the plate he is drying almost slips from his fingers. For so long Victoria has dominated his life, as the Lost Love, the symbol of all his regrets and longing, that it’s a monumental moment, and yet it also… isn’t.

In the past days and weeks he has been thinking about her a lot. He didn’t consciously try to avoid it like he used to, and when he did, the usual sadness didn’t come. They were just thoughts, like he might be thinking about the weather. So it doesn’t happen from one second to the next that he is free of her; he simply needed a while to realise that it had happened long ago.

It’s till enough to baffle him, freeze him to the ground. He only realizes he’s stopped moving and is staring at the wall when Ray touches his shoulder, asking him if he’s okay. His friend looks a little confused, taken aback even, when Benton looks into his face with a grin that feels like it’s going to melt his face. “Yes, Ray. Everything is perfect,” Benton says, and kisses him.

Ray freezes. For a moment he stands completely still in Benton’s arms, and it’s weird, kind of, kissing someone as tall as he is. It’s the second time, technically, for them, but this is the first time that counts because this time at least one of them means it. Benton feels his heart thunder with both fear and exhilaration and he’s still riding that rush, overwhelmed enough that he doesn’t even realize he’s gripped both of Ray’s arms and is holding him in place.

But Ray doesn’t seem to mind. After a second, he kind of melts into Benton, and the kiss, spur of the moment that it was, doesn’t last much longer than that.

“Okay,” Ray says when he can and there are about two feet of air between them. “What was that about?”

“I’m sorry, Ray.” Benton isn’t, not at all. He might still be grinning. “I simply did not want to regret never having done that.”

“Kissing a guy?”

“No, Ray. Kissing you.”

“Well, okay then.” Ray half-grins at him, almost involuntary and clearly happy, and Benton’s heart does a happy little jump, but nothing else happens right then. They finish cleaning up and settle in front of the TV for a while with Ray half in Benton’s lap, the way they often did in the past weeks. Benton’s fingers are trailing gently up and down Ray’s neck and shoulders, trying to relax him enough that he can sleep, and today it seems to be working, as Ray is already pretty boneless against him.

The trick to this whole thing is timing and never forgetting the rules, as tempting as it is tonight. On some days, Ray can’t relax at all and there is nothing Benton can do to change that, but when Ray does relax, Benton needs to pay attention and make sure he slips away before Ray actually falls asleep. Because once he does, Benton can’t move without waking him up. It would mean Benton being trapped there for the rest of the night, which he wouldn’t even mind, except that Ray still doesn’t react well to waking up in his arms. Until a few days ago, Benton had the black eye to prove it.

Sometimes, though, Ray is so exhausted after days without rest that it seems he might sleep through an explosion. In that case, Benton has to resist the temptation of carrying him to bed instead of letting him sleep on the uncomfortable couch, because Ray also doesn’t take well to not waking up in the same place he fell asleep in.

It’s hardly surprising, considering he has spent almost two years surrounded by people who would have tortured him to death if he had made the slightest mistake, and he is never more vulnerable than when he is asleep. Benton understands, but it still bothers him because he doesn’t want things to be this way. He wants Ray to feel safe around him.

Tonight, for all that Ray seems to be ready to sleep, he doesn’t. He keeps looking at the TV, far too aware, and doesn’t even blink more than usual. Benton eventually sighs and fits his hand over the curve of Ray’s skull, as always surprised how warm it is. “Still awake? It’s past midnight.” He immediately wishes he could take those last words back – there is a reason why Ray covers the clock when he can’t sleep – but Ray only says, “I know. I’m just not tired, I guess.”

“Are you nervous about tomorrow?”

“Terrified,” Ray admits with a little laugh. “I really don’t know how that will go down. But I come bearing gifts, so at least the kids will be happy to see me.”

Benton runs his fingers along the shell of Ray’s ears, not even paying attention to what he’s doing. “I’m very proud of you, Ray.”

“For daring to visit my family? The family I used to share a house with?” Ray snorts. “Yeah, I can see how that can be considered an accomplishment worthy of praise.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. I know this isn’t easy. I’m proud of you because you’re doing it anyway.”

“Yeah? Just wait until I run screaming the moment I see my sister.”

“I’m proud of you for trying.”

Ray laughs softly. For a while they are both silent. Then Ray asks, hesitation in his voice, “Can we just stay here, like this, a little longer?”

“Of course, Ray.”

 

-

 

It’s dawn when Benton wakes up, his neck stiff and a blanket draped over him. Ray is nowhere to be seen.

 

-

 

Christmas Day starts out gray. Ray knows, because he watches it happen from the roof of the building, smoking one cigarette after another. It’s one of Armando’s bad habits, but one he never bothered shaking off. He doesn’t do it often, anyway. It’s just that sometimes it helps calm him down, or gives him a reason to go outside. (Benny knows, of course, but Ray still doesn’t like doing it where he can see. Also, if he smoked inside, the whole place would soon smell as badly as it did when he moved in.)

Beneath him the city is waking up. The sound of traffic gets louder. Every now and then a car passes by on the street directly under him,but it’s rarely more than one at a time, and the cars aren’t much to look at, either. If he still had the Riv, he’d probably freak out every other day at the thought of it standing down there unprotected, but he doesn’t, and he doesn’t really care about the Ford.

Eventually, his fingers are so cold that he has to get back inside or risk them freezing off. He needs to get ready, anyway. Benny needs to get ready, too, instead of slumbering on the couch or alternatively worrying about where Ray might be since he’s still not good about leaving notes.

Nope, Benny’s awake all right, and looking slightly miffed. Ray supposes he gets on his friend’s nerves sometimes with his less than rational behaviour, but damn it, a grown man shouldn’t have to give a warning every time he went out for a smoke. Still, after last night, Ray feels slightly bad about it, like he ruined something.

Last night was actually pretty good. Ray tries to summon that feeling of warmth and love now, but it doesn’t stand a chance against the cold ball of dread in his stomach.

They each get ready without talking much, although it’s not an uncomfortable silence. Fraser dresses in the bedroom while Ray is busy in the bathroom, which is probably all kinds of ridiculous at this point but it’s a habit and a familiar pattern that Ray is grateful for right now.

If the party at the precinct is anything like those Ray remembers (God, it feels like a different life, now), it won’t really get started until long after noon, but no one there is going to be unhappy if the Mountie drops in early. Maybe he’ll help them solve crimes before lunch. Benny probably misses that. Or he’ll find a random crime no one else noticed, get everyone up and running and ruin Christmas.

Thinking back to those days, Ray misses even that.

In any case, Kowalski will be happy to see Fraser and Fraser will be happy to see Kowalski and everyone will be happy.

Ray chooses to leave early because he wants to be at the house before the extended family shows up. It’s going to be bad enough with just Ma, his sisters, Tony and the kids. Everyone else is going to be a challenge, especially since Ray hasn’t seen any of them for two years and they are really not good at holding back… well, anything.

And if he sees Uncle Nico, Ray might just punch him in the face, which is always a great way to break the happy Christmas spirit.

He’s probably not going to stay very long. When they are in the car, on the way to the station, he tells Benny to try the phone at the apartment first if he wants to be picked up from his own party.

He’ll just have to remember to actually stay inside after he gets home. Things were easier when he had a cell phone, but being always reachable is not something he wants these days.

Stopping before the station feels strange. All this, the days when Ray was a functioning human being, feel so far away they almost seem unreal. But one of the guys from evidence, Paul, recognizes him when he walks by and greets him with a remark about the shitty car, and that’s real enough. Benny hesitates for a moment before getting out, but thankfully leaves without any kind of discussion.

Ray arrives at the house twenty minutes later. Both of the cars are in the driveway; it’s only seeing them that he realizes he kind of hoped half the family would be out doing whatever. He suddenly becomes aware that he won’t be able to carry all the presents on his own, so he’ll have to go twice, and for a minute or so he loses himself in trying to figure out which ones to take first so none of the kids will think he forgot about them.

He’s pulled out of his thoughts by the hint of movement behind a window. His first reaction is fear, a spike of adrenaline. He knows it’s ridiculous, but a part of him that refuses to die expects shots to be fired any moment and he has to resist the urge to throw himself down onto the passenger seat.

Five seconds later, the door opens and his mother comes down the stairs, followed by Francesca. Ray swallows and pulls himself together. Time to face the music.

 

-

 

Half an hour later Ray is desperate for the phone to ring because Benny wants to be picked up. And it’s unfair to want that because it would mean Benny was having a terrible time, but Ray has had many a good time ruined because of his Stetson-wearing friend, so he doesn’t feel all that guilty.

Not as guilty as he will feel if he is the cause of his entire family having a bad day on Christmas, and that’s exactly what will happen if he doesn’t get out of here soon. It isn’t even as bad as he feared it would be, but it’s still too much. It’s the kind of situation that makes Armando want to come to life; the exact reason why he left in the first place.

He just wishes everyone would leave him alone for five minutes. Just long enough to breathe.

The kids are happy because he gave them gifts. It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t keep asking him to play with them and looking so terribly disappointed when he says no.

His sisters leave him alone, mostly. In fact, Frannie keeps looking at him strangely, like she’s afraid of him, and Ray doesn’t know what to do with that. It’s freaking him out. Maria looks at him like she’s afraid _for_ him and that’s even worse. His brother-in-law Tony looks like he couldn’t care less whether Ray is there or not. Right now he’s Ray’s favourite person in the house.

His ma, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be able to take a hint. But then, what else is new? She keeps asking where he’s been, what he’s been doing, why he never calls them, if he doesn’t love them anymore. It reaches the point where he’s actually glad when the other guests arrive because they demand her attention and he can slip away.

But ‘away’ is just to the next room, also filled with people. The relatives are staying for a week and right now they are spreading through the upper floors, and it seems wherever Ray goes someone ambushes him. He thinks he’s doing quite well, but he can also tell that whatever keeps him from flipping out right now is rapidly running out.

The only way to avoid that seems to be running out himself, except that it would break Ma’s heart and everyone would talk about it, and he can’t do that to her on Christmas. So he’s pretty much stuck.

When he finally makes it outside, it’s just to stand on the porch, itching for a cigarette he knows he can’t have here. There are two of his cousins out here, both smoking, but they are known smokers and not his mother’s sons. They also fail to ignore his presence. Ray clenches his hands to stop their shaking as he forces a smile and a few words of small talk.

He’d leave if his coat wasn’t inside, protected by his mother. He’d leave without it if it didn’t hold his car keys.

About a minute or so before he reaches the point where he thinks, Fuck it, I’m a cop, I can hotwire a crappy old Ford, his salvation appears at the end of the driveway in a Stetson and a red plaid jacket. The sight makes Ray so happy he doesn’t even wonder what Benny is doing here. He jumps over the edge of the porch with wobbly joints that tell him he needs to work out more and jogs over to his friend before he can get into easy earshot of the cousins on the porch.

“What are you doing here, Fraser? Why didn’t you call, I would have picked you up.” He tries to sound disapproving but suspects that he sounds relieved more than anything. He could have kissed Benny right here and now, but that _definitely_ would ruin Christmas for his mother.

And for Francesca. Now _there_ is a thought…

“Ray was called to an incident two blocks away and offered to drop me off here,” Benny explains. Ray manages not to flinch at the mention of Kowalski. He’ll never get used to his replacement having the same name as him, that’s like adding insult to injury. It’s ridiculous, of course. Kowalski was just doing his job, and as far as Ray knows he’s a decent guy, so he can hardly blame Benny for liking him. Still, sometimes it’s hard not to snap at his friend when he talks about ’Ray‘ as if there were only one man with that name in the world that matters to him and Ray wonders why he is mentioned in the third person before he realizes that Benny is talking about someone else.

“And you gave up the chance to hunt criminals to see my family? Ma will be so pleased.” Ray forces a grin, but Fraser kind of frowns. Not a real frown, more like a Fraser-frown that would be a frown if his face wasn’t so polite.

“Is everything alright, Ray? You seemed rather eager to get away, there.”

“Nah, it’s okay. Just happy to see you, that’s all.”

“And here I was worried you would be sick of my presence by now.” There is a hint of a smile now, but Fraser still looks worried.

“As if that were possible. Although, let me tell you, two people are not meant to spend so much time together with so little room. If I had known you’d move in two days after me, I would have gotten a bigger place.” He actually thought about moving, but always remembers in time that Benny is going to be leaving soon and Ray really doesn’t need all that space on his own.

He shivers. Out here, nothing protects him from the icy breeze and he’s wearing only a shirt. He’s also standing right beside his car and knows, without a doubt, that he will not go back into that house. “I was thinking about leaving,” he says, keeping his tone light. “If you want to go in and say Hi, I’ll wait here for you. Or you can stay for dinner and I’ll pick you up later.”

Benny seems torn for a moment. After crime ruined one Christmas party for him, he’s probably been looking forward to Ray’s mother’s cooking. But before Ray can force himself to say anything to encourage him to stay, Benny says something about how it would be “impolite to come here and then leave without wishing them Merry Christmas,” and Ray realizes he’s torn about whether to enter the house at all or not.

“Go on, then. I’ll wait here.”

“Are you not going to get your coat?”

“I can wait in the car.” He probably should get his coat. And say goodbye. Benny probably doesn’t approve of his behaviour, but right now, that house feels like a death trap.

Fraser hesitates for another second before he shakes off his own jacket and wraps it around Ray’s shoulders. It’s warm from the other’s impossible body heat and Ray cannot help but burrow into it, feeling pathetic.

He sits in the car while Fraser is gone, suddenly fighting tears and the urge to just get the car started and drive away. But he can’t leave Fraser alone out here without his jacket, except Fraser is carrying Ray’s coat over his arm when he finally, finally reappears.

He’s also carrying boxes of food. For a few seconds, Ray loses himself in helpless giggles.

“Well,” he says when he pulls himself together. “That was a bad idea.”

“Was it bad?” Of course Benny has to ask. Suddenly Ray isn’t sure anymore if Kowalski has really been called out here or if Benny just came because he thought Ray needed rescuing.

“No, not bad. It was okay.” Ray fishes the keys out of the coat and starts the car. “I could have done without all the kissing, though.”

“It’s a sign of affection,” Benny says with his Benny-earnestness, and Ray doesn’t even want to think about what he’s aiming for right now. So he just makes a sound of acknowledgement and drives them home.


	4. Chapter 4

Just after New Year they try to make love. Despite the growing intimacy between them, it is not something Ray expected to happen anytime soon, or maybe ever. He didn’t plan for anything like this, and he’s pretty sure Fraser didn’t either. It just happens.

Or perhaps he should have seen it coming. There were moments, in the preceding weeks, that could easily have gone this way. Moments where Ray thought that they could have sex now and it would seem natural and kind of inevitable, but those moments never went very far. Maybe Benny didn’t see them the same way, or maybe he thought that there was a limit to how far they should take this thing as long as Ray was so tired he was almost incoherent. For three days after his visit with his family he couldn’t sleep at all. He could barely eat, and he felt like the worst son ever.

He’s been (still is) a constant disappointment for his father. There used to be comfort in the fact that at least he was a son his mother could love, that at least he was there for his sisters when they really needed him. He knew, while he was trying not to choke on his self-pity, that he was blowing things out of proportion, but it was hard not to overreact to just about everything while feeling this miserable.

At some point Benny sat down with him and started talking about professional help and medication again; Ray remembers the conversation only dimly, but he knows that by the end of it he nearly kicked Fraser out of the apartment. In the end it was once again Ray who left, going for a long walk and coming back after nightfall, cold and feeling silly. That day ended with him lying in Benny’s arms and crying openly for the first time since they started living together. He doesn’t even remember over what, or if it was anything in particular.

That night he slept.

And now he’s sitting on the bed in the dark room, with the last fireworks still echoing through the city, and he does not think about how last year he and the guys used the noise of exploding firecrackers to mask the gunshots that killed five men. Instead, he concentrates on Benny’s hands on his naked back as he’s pushing up his shirt. Concentrates on the feeling of skin on skin, on being warm for the first time in forever, in burying his hands in Benny’s hair and seeking out his lips. Doesn’t think about how this goes against everything he was raised to value, but about how it felt to find his friend with a woman years ago; how it seemed like the impeccable Mountie was a little more human all of a sudden, a little more touchable. How he was so delighted for his friend, and so jealous. (It didn’t really sting until Fraser dumped him for her.)

When his father says, “I should’ve seen this coming. Always knew my son was a sissy. That guy in Vegas left you so desperate for it you’re gonna spread your legs for anyone willing to shove their dick up your ass now?” form somewhere in the corner, he doesn’t react. Just like he never reacted in Vegas. There’s no reply, no attempt to find the ghost in the darkness, not even a flinch. Vegas trained him well, in so many ways. Reacting would have been suspicious then, so he pretended not to hear, when growing up he had been trained to always pay attention to Pop, out of respect and necessity. Pop was pissed about being ignored, of course. His words just got louder and uglier, like he _wanted_ to get his son killed.

Considering his views on ‘fairies’ and ‘homos’, that’s not even all that unlikely.

He’s going on now, too, and Ray keeps ignoring him – or wishes he could. It’s not like there’s anything new being said. It’s not like it matters what his dead asshole of a father thinks. But his hands are shaking when he touches Benny, and, oh shit, that’s bad, they aren’t supposed to do that, how would he ever explain to Mickey why he’s freaking out before they even really started?

But Mickey barely ever expected him to actively participate. The first time Ray was almost frozen with horror when the older man started groping him until he finally figured out what exactly it was ‘Armando’ was expected to do now, and he still made it through without acting too suspicious. In a way that paralyzing fear had worked to his advantage then, because it kept him quiet and kept him from doing all the things he desperately wanted to do, but he can’t fall back on that here. Can’t let Benny do all the work, he deserves better than that, but his hands are shaking so hard now and he can barely breathe.

Suddenly large hands wrap around his wrists, prying them away from Benny’s shoulders, holding them still, and that is so familiar it’s almost comforting. His head sinks forward against his will and he closes his eyes, tries to pull himself together, to not let ghosts and memories ruin something good.

Behind him, he can hear his father’s footsteps coming closer.

 

-

 

What is left of Benton’s arousal dies when Ray flinches in his arms and pulls his hands out of his lover’s grasp. Benton lets them go immediately. He usually likes the feeling of holding Ray’s slender wrists in his large hands, but now it was starting to feel increasingly uncomfortable. Wrong. He’s much stronger than Ray, and Ray is emotionally fragile to the point where he’s barely able to function some days, and Benton horribly misjudged the situation.

He has been so careful to make sure this was something they _both_ wanted, and he still got it wrong. Ray probably doesn’t even know what he wants. And he comes from a very traditional family, grew up and works in an environment that emphasises the stereotypical image of masculinity. It’s hardly surprising that the act of making love to another man is putting too much strain on him.

One week ago, knowing that Ray loved him was enough for Benton. Why couldn’t it just stay that way?

Once again he let his heart betray him, let it become too greedy and throw caution to the wind. He had thought Ray, at least, would be safe from the destructiveness of his love, now that Benton loved _him_.

He should never have let him get this close.

Ray doesn’t seem to hear any of his frantic apologies. Yet he doesn’t run, doesn’t push Benton away as expected but brings his hands up to his ears and seems to curl in on himself, burrowing his face in Benton’s shoulder. And Benton’s arms close around him instinctively, holding him close instead of pushing him away as they ought to.

After a while, Ray lets his hands drop, leaving one lying limply by his side, the other curled into a fist between their bodies; Benton can feel it pressing into his chest, but the contact is incidental. Ray is still shaking like a leaf, though the tension is slowly leaving his body.

When he finally speaks, it sounds as if he were speaking to himself. “It was so easy,” he mumbles, his voice coming from far away. “Easier than everything else, really. All I had to do was lie there.”

It takes a few moments for Benton to apply meaning to those words.

Afterwards, it takes a long time for him to calm down.

 

-

 

“You’re making too big a deal out of this,” Ray says half an hour later. He’s sitting on the couch, wrapped in the blanket Benton tugged around him in an instinctive and pathetic attempt to shelter him and is still shivering. But he also looks alert and composed and… irritated, for lack of a better word. He just involuntarily revealed this horrible thing that happened to him and he’s _irritated_ about it.

“Are you even listening to yourself?” Benton snaps. “You’re an officer of the law, Ray! It’s your job to know it’s a big deal.”

“Not this time. It’s not what you think. You’re just jumping to conclusions because I freaked out at a bad moment, but it really wasn’t that way.”

“Then what was it, Ray?”

“Part of the job.” Ray sneers, all ugly defiance. “Remember, I got paid for it.”

“Oh God, Ray, Ray.” Benton fists his hands in his hair, wanting nothing more than to go over to Ray and hold him but knowing it would not be welcome at this time. “That changes nothing.”

“It changes everything. It’s not like I said no. It’s not like Mick even knew who he was fucking. Maybe Armando was into it.”

“Well, _you_ weren’t.”

“It _doesn’t matter_.”

“Evidently it does!”

Dief whines. He’s sitting on the couch, very close to Ray, and looks from one to the other, not understanding what’s going on and not liking the general air of tension and desperation that fills the room. Benton paces, helpless and devastated, while Ray closes up more and more and keeps glancing towards the door, waiting for the right moment to bolt.

“It’s nothing compared to the things _I_ have done,” he says, his voice cold as ice. “Of all the things that keep me awake at night, this doesn’t even make it to the top one hundred.” He stands, disturbing Dief even more. “You want something to freak out over? How about the fact that you almost slept with a guy who used to cut the limbs off human corpses so as to better fit them into a suitcase? Who knows what it feels like to cut the ear off a head while the mouth is begging for mercy.” Ray takes a step closer, the blanket sliding off his shoulders. Even in the loose sweatpants and oversized shirt he looks deadly calm and once again Benton is reminded this man, who is ultimately so gentle and kind, managed to survive among mobsters for so long without being made. “Do you know how easy it is?” Ray asks, sounding almost curious. “There’s hardly any resistance.”

“God, Ray.” Benton groans. He refuses to step back, but he wants to do… something. Anything to make Ray shut up. Anything to undo all of this, because after weeks of watching Ray barely hang on, it’s all so much worse than he imagined.

Ray’s face twists into an ugly smile. “You dodged a bullet, buddy.”

“Stop it!” Benton takes hold of Ray’s shoulders before he even knows what he’s doing and shakes him once, hard. “Shut up, Ray. God.” His voice almost dies on him. He pulls Ray into his arms and holds him tight, to keep him safe and keep him from getting away and because he can’t bear to look at his face any longer. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t.” Ray’s voice is muffled by Benton’s shirt but he sounds angry. “Don’t say that. You have no idea what you’re talking about, you know _nothing_.” He fights against Benton’s hold but he has no chance of freeing himself because Benton knows that even now Ray won’t do anything to actually hurt him. Except he’s wrong, because Ray is panicking and getting away is the only thing he can think of right now. Suddenly a fist hits Benton in the stomach and it’s surprise rather than actual pain that makes him loosen his hold enough for Ray to tear free. “I don’t deserve, I don’t, don’t.” He can barely get out the words as he throws himself away, tries to gain his footing and runs.

Benton is after him in a second. There is not even time, or need, to think. He just knows that he cannot let this man get out of this apartment, out of his sight. And Ray has no chance of getting away from him, none at all. Benton wrestles him down, feeling like a bad guy, feeling horrible but unable to think of anything else.

Ray fights him for another ten seconds before he gives up and just lies there, breathing hard. He’s bathed in sweat and white as a sheet.

“I’m going to puke,” he suddenly says, his voice flat and his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Benton helps him get up and they barely make it to the bathroom in time.

Ray hasn’t eaten a lot since Christmas. Everything about the sight is pitiful.

When Ray is done, Benton helps him back to the couch. By now Ray can barely stand but Benton knows better than to let his guard down. He sits his friend down, heats up water for some tea and fills a glass with water so Ray can wash the taste of vomit out of his mouth.

After he hands it to the other man, he puts his hand on Ray’s wrist, looks him in the eyes, and says, “You have to talk to someone, Ray. You can’t keep carrying all this on your own.”

Ray doesn’t give an answer beyond a shake of the head, but his face twists into the hint of a sneer. Seeking help still doesn’t seem to be on the agenda, but Benton is beginning to understand that this is going to be more than Ray can handle on his own, and there is only so much Benton can do to help when he just doesn’t know enough to avoid all the landmines.

When a few minutes later the tea is done and Benton places it on the table in front of Ray, he asks, “Did you tell the men from the FBI?” He is afraid that the answer is no; that for some reason that may have to do with fear or pride or the way he was brought up, Ray never even tried to get help and get out.

But Ray only laughs hoarsely into the teacup. “The whole place was bugged. Nothing going on in there that they didn’t know about.”

Benton hopes that he will never again have to deal with the FBI, in whatever function. If ever another agent is unlucky enough to cross his path, he doesn’t know what he will do.

Of course he won’t have to deal with the FBI if he’s in Canada. It’s something he has been thinking about a lot lately – his departure is getting nearer and nearer. In a month his leave will be officially over. Maybe he will be able to add another two weeks or three, but then he’ll have to go back.

But he doesn’t want to leave Ray alone here. By now, the thought has become almost unbearable.

“I talked to my superiors,” he finally says, after a long silence filled with quiet misery on Ray’s side and quiet, seething anger at the FBI on Benton’s. “To see if I could have back my old post at the consulate.”

“What?” Ray seems confused but happy at the change of topic. “Why didn’t you tell me about that?”

“I did not want to tell you I might be staying before I knew for sure.”

“Benny.” Ray looks all earnest again. “I know you wanted to go back to Canada since you first came here. You _wanted_ that post in Where In The Hell End Of Nowhere they offered you. Don’t throw that away just for me.”

“But you’re more important to me than that post, Ray. And I did find many things about the city I came to appreciate and would miss. People, mostly. Regardless,” he adds when Ray wants to say something, “it doesn’t matter because they will not change my assignment.”

Ray opens his mouth, closes it again, and says nothing in the end. The disappointment on his face that he can’t quite hide reassures Benton that he is wanted here, but it also makes him regret that he had to bring it up and get Ray’s hopes up. “As it turned out,” he explains, “I annoyed some people when I took such a long leave of absence right after getting the post I asked for. Now they say that since I asked for it, I have to keep it.”

“Well, good riddance,” Ray mutters. “Since you did ask for it, and all.”

“Ray.” This time he closes his hand fully around Rays. “Please come with me.”

Ray looks down. After a moment he shakes his head, barely perceptible. “I can’t, Benny. I want to. Believe me, I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want you to leave. But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“What is there for me to do in Canada?”

 _‘What is there for you here?’_ Benton thinks and doesn’t say it because it’s cruel.

Ray sighs. “I have a psych evaluation coming up on the tenth. With any luck I’ll fail it and there won’t be anything to do for me here either.”

Again, Benton has to hold himself back from saying something inappropriate. He’d almost forgotten that going back to work is still an option for Ray, theoretically at least. Living with the man, he can’t see how anything about that idea is not horrible, even if Ray should actually be able to handle whatever duties they give him.

“They want to make me Lieutenant.” That sneer is back on Ray’s face, showing clearly what he thinks of that notion. “Because I did such a great job in Vegas, and because I’m no good as a detective anymore.”

“Are you going to accept?”

“Hell, yeah.”

Benton can tell from the determined set of Ray’s jaw that he really means it. He can’t shake off the impression that Ray is seeing his return to work as some kind of personal challenge he can’t abide to fail. In many ways he understands that. He still doesn’t like the consequences.

“I still have more than a month before I need to leave.” He keeps his voice level, trying to sound optimistic. “We will figure out what to do.”

With any luck, Ray will fail the evaluation. Benton knows it’s not fair to wish this on his friend. It might damage him even further, but he is convinced that Ray going back to work like this is going to be the worst thing that can possibly happen.

 

-

 

Ray passes his evaluation. Benton shouldn’t be surprised – after all, Ray fooled all of Las Vegas for far too long – but surprised he is, though he tries not to show it.

Ray passes his physical as well. The doctor decides that while he won’t be running any marathons and shouldn’t be out in the cold for too long, he’s well enough to sit on a chair and order people around. Ray looks gleefully happy when he comes home to tell Benton the news, but Benton can see right through his act. Ray is actually terrified.

But he’s determined to make it, so the least his friend can do is support him as long as he can.

There’s even an open position at the 34th precinct and the Chicago Police Department is eager for Ray to start working. In the end he does so far too early. For the first few months he’s supposed to be working reduced hours, but Benton knows far too well that in the law enforcement business, overtime is the norm rather than the exception and the chances that Ray is going to overdo it are far too high.

On Ray’s first day of work, Benton has not quite four weeks left before he has to be in Canada. He and Ray spent the night together – not physically intimate, but sharing the bed that easily offers enough room for both of them, holding each other in a form of intimacy that goes far beyond sex. It’s still hard for Ray to accept another person so close to him in his bed, and Benton doesn’t know what would have happened had his friend fallen asleep and woken like that. They risk it because neither of them expects Ray to find any sleep that night, and he doesn’t. Neither does Benton.

He wants to accompany Ray on that first day in the office but doesn’t dare make the suggestion. In the past, before Las Vegas and before whatever it is that’s happening between them, he might just have gone without either of them thinking anything of it, but now it seems to carry too many implications. And it’s a new precinct that isn’t prepared to handle an ever-present Mountie yet. They will have to get used to it, though.

They will have to get used to it for not quite a month.

After Ray leaves, Benton makes the bed, walks Dief to the park and back and goes shopping for groceries. By the time he’s back home it’s not even noon. He already knows that he’s going to go to the precinct today, but it’s hard to determine the right moment. On the first day, Ray is probably going to be very busy. A lot of people will be demanding his attention, and everyone will be covertly checking out their new Lieutenant…

Everything about the mere _thought_ of that is terrible. Benton decides that the time has come to inconspicuously check on Ray when he realizes just how disastrous the situation might already be. Waiting for the bus tests his patience, but the 34th is too far away to walk, and during the trip, he realizes that he is also quite angry. Ray can’t even walk down the street without risking an anxiety attack some days. What made him think he’s up for this? For dealing with people, taking responsibilities, making decisions, facing crimes and criminals. It’ll be a miracle if he makes it through this first day without arresting himself or worse.

Suddenly, the way to the station seems very long.

But when he gets there, he isn’t greeted by the disaster he feared. He has never been to this precinct before, so the layout of the place is unfamiliar, but it is, in the end, a police station and not hard to navigate for someone who has seen a few. Except that when he comes in someone asks him what his business is and he is at a loss for a moment because no one has asked that at the 27th since the very first day, when he arrived asking for the person to talk to regarding his father’s murder and ended up in the holding cell looking for ‘Detective Armani’.

This time he gives his name, and before he can state his purpose, the man at the desk looks up for the first time and says, “Ah. You’re the Mountie, right? Should have known, with the hat and all. The Lieu told us to send you in if you show up here.”

“Thank you kindly.” Benton nods and makes his way into the familiar chaos, looking for Ray’s office and eventually finding it a surprisingly long distance from the coffee machine.

The blinds are closed, and so is the door. Benton feels the careful optimism that had begun to grow inside him die, but then he realizes that Ray might just be talking to someone, or trying to get some work done without being disturbed, or he might be on the phone. Or not in. There are so many possibilities and only a few of them are bad.

It leaves Benton with the question of whether to go in or not. He tries the classical way: knocking on the door and listening for a reply.

Before his knuckles make contact with the door, however, a voice calls out to him, warning him to stop. The voice belongs to a female detective with a ponytail and gray streaks in her black hair. She gives Benton the kind of smile he has grown used to and a wink to indicate she’s doing him a favor.

“You don’t want to go in there,” she says. “The Lieutenant’s been on the phone for a while.”

“And if I disturb him, I will get my head ripped off, figuratively speaking?” Benton asks carefully. He’s had a hard time imagining Ray as anyone’s boss when things were okay. There is no telling how he’ll handle irritations now that he’s so fragile.

She makes a vague gesture. “Hard to say. New guy, you know? But he seems a little… intense, sometimes. Almost creepy. I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side, in any case, considering I have to work with him. Although that doesn’t go for you?” It sounds like a question. Benton is wearing civil clothes except for the Stetson and she probably wonders if he’s a plain-clothes cop like her.

“No,” he informs her. “I live with him.”

“Oh.” She frowns, looks insecure for a moment, clearly not sure what to make of that statement. There are several ways in which two men can live together and he’s not going to point her in any direction. “So, you know him well, then?”

“I do. He has been my closest friend for many years.”

“I see.” She blushes a little, probably remembering that she just called his friend creepy. “Oh, hey!” Her eyes suddenly widen in realization. “You’re the Mountie, aren’t you? We’ve been warned that a Mountie might show up wherever Lieutenant Vecchio goes.”

The title still sounds strange. Benton wonders if Ray has gotten used to it yet.

“Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” he officially introduces himself, forcing a friendly smile. “I have indeed been working with Ray Vecchio for a long time.”

“Well, then.” She smiles when she shakes his hand and holds it a little too long. “I assume we are going to see more of you around here, then?”

“That appears to be almost inevitable.”

Her smile widens, but before she can say anything else that would possibly make the conversation even more awkward for Benton, he asks her if she can tell him who her new Lieutenant is talking to.

He doesn’t just want to know if she knows but also if she can tell him. After all, he is no official part of the police department and he doesn’t want her to get in trouble, even though Ray certainly wouldn’t mind Benton knowing. If it’s a long call, chances are he’s going to be annoyed about it, which usually results in a rant in Benton’s general direction. He’s going to hear about it. All he wants to know _now_ is how much longer he can expect this to take.

“I’m not sure. The FBI, if I got that right. Quite something, for the first day, but from what we heard about him I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I suppose you’d know more about it, huh?” She looks at Benton expectantly, unsuccessfully trying to mask her curiosity, but he’s too distracted to react in any way and eventually she shrugs. “Anyway, I hope they don’t start dropping in here at every turn. No one wants the feds in their precinct.”

Benton just makes a non-committal sound. He has lost all interest in the conversation. What he wants to do is go in there, take the phone and be very, very polite to the agent on the other end of the line.

Another phone rings, and apparently it’s the officer’s, because she excuses herself and hurries away. Benton barely registers it. He does knock on the door this time and, feigning ignorance, opens it a crack like a person checking to see if it’s okay to come in.

Ray is not on the phone. He’s sitting behind a desk that is showing only the first signs of the clutter that will dominate the next era of its existence, just as it doubtlessly dominated the last. When the door opens he looks up, sharply, and Benton sees the mask fall over his face for a fraction of a second before it’s replaced by recognition and a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Benny,” he greets. “I was wondering when you would show up here.”

“I was informed you were on the phone.”

“And decided to come in anyway?” Ray makes a dismissive gesture when Benton sets off to justify himself. “Naw, it’s okay. It was boring anyway. And I’ve been done for a while.”

After which he obviously decided to keep hiding in here. Benton doesn’t say anything about that. Ray seems fine enough, which is an incredible relief, but something about him seems a little off. Just enough to be unsettling.

“Who did you talk to?”

Ray raises his eyebrows. “Seriously? Do you think this door you were just talking behind is sound proof? And just for your information, yes, it really was the feds, since Detective Miller seemed to not be entirely clear on that part.”

There’s something strange in his voice, something cold perhaps, but it’s not enough for Benton to put his finger on. “Was it about a case?”

Ray glares at him, clearly not appreciating the question. “No. It was about Vegas and the trials. They needed to clear something up. It didn’t take long.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” But Benton is still frowning. Ray is surprisingly well. His hands don’t even shake, and they did almost non-stop the last few days. He is a little bit pale, probably due to the lack of sleep, but he’s calm, keeping it together, and judging from the pile of paperwork on his desk actually doing his job. So what if he locked himself away for a few minutes to escape the madness outside his office and the constant attention of the detectives trying to assess their new boss. It’s hardly something Benton can blame him for.

So why, then, does it feel like something is terribly wrong?

Benton tries to ignore the feeling. He asks Ray if he ate already and Ray seems happy enough to answer in the negative and accept his invitation for lunch. On the way out, Ray is striding quickly, with purpose and energy, as if they were on a mission, and Benton understands that that is exactly the impression he wants to give. If they look busy and in a hurry, people will be less likely to bother them.

They make it out without any bothering happening, which seems like some kind of special achievement, considering that Welsh barely ever made it down the hall without five people or more coming to him with this or that. But everyone seems to be eager to get out of their way today. Benton hopes that Ray didn’t leave too bad an impression on his first day.

They take the car, drive a few blocks. Ray probably goes further than he has to. Benton doesn’t think he has any particular goal in mind as he sits behind the wheel. He’s just going on and on, and his knuckles are white and his face seems to be made of stone. Benton leaves him alone for a long time, not saying anything, just letting him drive.

Eventually he pulls into the parking lot of a diner. Benton has never been in this area before, but the diner is part of a chain, the food generic but acceptable. Dief would like it, but he is visiting Willie. (And he will never learn that they were here, else he’ll never stop complaining that they didn’t bring him a doggy bag. Which they are not going to do.)

Once he sees how full the place is, Benton decides that it was a bad choice. But it’s lunch time, every place is going to be packed. At least here they still find a booth to sit in. They both order, and Ray talks about his first half day at the new job. He complains about a few of the detectives, about the retired Lieutenant who left him far too much unfinished work, about the lack of proper heating in the bullpen and two of the more idiotic cases that landed on his desk that day. He talks with his hands and raises his voice and almost manages to distract Benton from the fact that he’s barely touching his food.

But he’s behaving too much like he did before Las Vegas for this to be anything other than an act. Benton would think that this was Ray pretending to be okay like he had done when they had started living together, but something is off. He cannot, however, figure out what.

In the end, Dief does get his doggie bag, but only because Benton hates seeing food go to waste. When he makes a remark about Ray’s eating habits, Ray doesn’t wave it off or give the perfectly acceptable explanation that he is too stressed today to stomach much; instead he just fixes Benton with a cool, level gaze that almost freezes him in his seat. And makes him regret ever having said anything.

It only lasts a moment, but Benton can’t shake off the feeling it leaves him with. He says nothing on the way back, suddenly unable to think of any topic to talk about. There are no Inuit stories to help him when he can’t pinpoint what the problem is.

He does figure it out by the time they get back to the precinct. Benton has already decided to end his visit because he is strangely unnerved and sensing that he is not entirely welcome here, even though Ray loses all the tension that filled him during the ride the moment he leaves the car and switches back to calm and relaxed. In fact, he is far more relaxed than Benton has seen him in a long time (possibly ever), moving with almost boneless grace.

Benton follows him inside just to make his leaving seem less abrupt, and so he’s there to see it when someone calls Ray’s name and Ray flinches and freezes for almost a second.

It’s over before anyone else can notice, but Benton does. And he knows instantly what it means. It seems strange that he didn’t figure it out before.

On the way back home he is feeling so thoroughly disturbed that he gets off the bus two stations early and starts walking without even paying attention to where he is going. He thinks about visiting Ray’s family just to talk to someone, but he doesn’t want to bother them with this when they and Ray have only just settled into a fragile arrangement where Ray calls once a week and they meet for lunch once in a while when the kids are out. He thinks about talking to Ray Kowalski, but that seems wrong somehow. In the end he aims for Willie’s place. It’s quite a long way, but that suits him fine. He needs to think.

It’s not even the fact that Ray is hiding in his Langoustini persona to make it at work that disturbs him most, although it disturbs him _a lot_. It’s the fact that even when they were on their own, Ray didn’t shake it off. That’s why his behaviour in the diner, while typical for him, felt so unnatural. It wasn’t Ray Vecchio, it was Armando Langoustini _playing_ Ray Vecchio. And that was wrong on so many levels.

He doesn’t know if it started when Ray went to work this morning or if it was the FBI calling that threw him off balance. In the end it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it’s happening and it’s so very harmful. It’s no surprise the detective Benton met earlier thinks that her new boss is creepy.

It needs to stop.

 

-

 

But it doesn’t stop. Benton tries to talk to Ray about it that evening after work, but Ray brushes him off, and he still isn’t himself. He tries again the next morning, when Ray is just Ray after two or three hours of sleep, and Ray promises to try without meeting Benton’s eyes. But when he comes home that day, he’s Langoustini again, and he continues to be Langoustini even when he’s only around Benton. He’s just pretending not to be, and the result is chilling and frightening and makes Benton want to scream. It’s not a feeling he’s used to, and as such it makes everything even more disconcerting.

A week passes, then another one. After the first few days, Ray disappears almost completely, replaced by someone else. He pretends, but Benton can see right through the disguise. More than once he wants to shake him until his friend comes back. He had known Ray going back to work was a bad idea, but he hadn’t foreseen _this_. It’s like everything that ever happened between them has been erased.

Ray keeps calling his family, but he stops seeing them in person. Benton understands why, and sees it as a sign that Ray is still in there, still trying to keep Langoustini as far away from his family as possible, but the thought is sad rather than hopeful. They stop sharing a bed, and after a while Benton realizes that the physical distance between them has grown in general. There are hardly any casual touches anymore. When they sit on the couch, they sit on opposite ends. Ray no longer accompanies him and Dief on their walks. He sleeps a little more than he did before and he always wakes up screaming.

Even Dief keeps his distance from Ray, wary and confused, because he knows something is unnatural and wrong about him but he doesn’t know what or why.

As times goes by, it becomes more and more obvious that Ray is also trying to drive them away. The only reason why he’s not actively kicking them out is because in two weeks Benton will have to leave anyway. And he doesn’t know what will happen then. He only knows that Ray can’t go on like this, that Benton allowed it to happen for far too long. If Ray can’t function at work without becoming someone else, then he has to get help or he has to quit. Benton is aware that being able to go to work and do his job is incredibly important to his friend, but some things come with too high a price.

Eventually he sits Ray down and tells him that. It doesn’t go well. Ray doesn’t appreciate being told what to do – or rather, Langoustini doesn’t. But he doesn’t get angry when Benton tells him about his concerns and makes him _listen_. A man with a reputation like the Bookman cannot allow himself to show emotions in front of other people. He gets dangerous instead.

Without saying or doing anything, Ray manages to project a cold, calculating cruelty that makes it clear beyond any doubt that every word Benton says is another nail in his coffin. And for all he’s lived his life determined never to let criminals intimidate him in any way, Benton knows that he would fear this man if he didn’t know, with more certainty than he has ever known anything else, that Ray would never knowingly do anything to harm him.

Rather than being afraid, Benton gets angry. He doesn’t show it and it’s mostly because he is frustrated and increasingly desperate. After all the time and all the little steps of progress, this feels like Ray is simply slipping away and there is nothing Benton can do about it. It’s an anger born from fear.

He remains calm, letting the anger fuel his determination, knowing he will need it. He makes Ray sit at the table (where they had their Christmas dinner, where they had candles and drank juice out of beer glasses) and he takes both his hands in a firm grip to make him stay.

Ray looks down at their joined hands and he doesn’t even visibly tense up. “Don’t touch me,” he says, his voice dangerously calm.

Benton doesn’t let go. After a few seconds, Ray tries to pull his hands away but Benton holds them effortlessly, and Ray seems to understand that he has no chance to getting out of this. He’s still outwardly calm, but Benton feels his pulse pick up where his fingers are touching Ray’s wrist and notes the barely-there increase of speed in his breathing.

And then Benton remembers, too well, what has been done to Ray when he was playing Langoustini. He has no right to use his greater strength against the other man, not if he wants to get through to him, or keep the right to ever touch him ever again. So he lets go, knowing full well that Ray might run, physically or figuratively, and that he will have blown his chance to talk about it, because Ray doesn’t _want_ to talk about it. He has to be forced. And Benton can’t do it, not by using physical strength. Anything he accomplishes under those conditions would be worthless.

But while Ray pulls back his arms and scoots back the chair, he remains sitting opposite Benton, just a little further away. Benton sees this as a good sign, until he realizes that what he just did could be interpreted as some sort of power game in which he had just demonstrated that he _could_ force Ray, if he wanted to.

“I’m sorry,” he says, feeling terrible and ashamed for his thoughtlessness. In the world he lives in, things like that never needed consideration. But they do in the world Ray lives in right now. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You shouldn’t have– ” Ray stares at him. “What are you talking about?”

“I shouldn’t have touched you without your permission,” Benton clarifies. “I shouldn’t have held you against your will. I’m stronger than you. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of that.” He looks Ray in the eyes, openly judging his reaction.

Ray, to his credit, remains calm, even though he’s visibly tense. His face is a hard mask and he never breaks eye contact. “Is this going somewhere, Fraser?”

“No. It’s just a mistake I made. I didn’t think. I should have known better than to use physical force in an argument with a rape victim.”

Ray bolts upright and back, but he doesn’t make it very far before he just… freezes. He stands there, staring at Benton, his face white as a sheet.

He’s probably never even thought the words in connection with himself.

“What the hell, Benny?” he asks, eventually. His voice is still cold and calm, but his mask is slipping, badly. It’s what Benton wanted but there’s no triumph in this victory.

He stands as well, but Ray takes a step back when Benton takes one forward. It stings, but is entirely acceptable. “I’m so sorry, Ray,” he says, meaning it. “I didn’t know what else to do.” He realizes that once again he has used Ray’s traumatic experiences against him; he just didn’t touch him this time. “I never meant to hurt you. This was very poor planning.”

“Poor planning,” Ray echoes. “Are you crazy? Do you even know what you’re doing here?”

“I am trying to save you, Ray!” It’s not what Benton _wanted_ to say, but it’s the truth. “And I don’t know how to do it. I know I’m doing this wrong and I have no excuse for what I said, but I needed to reach you somehow. You cannot keep hiding behind Langoustini. Do you even realise what you’re doing to yourself? And to everyone else?”

“I’m not doing anything to anyone.” Ray’s voice is shaking now. “I didn’t ask you to come here. If you don’t like what you see, just go away! No one’s stopping you.” He’s angry now. In Vegas, showing any kind of weakness would have been fatal in the long run, but here and now he is angry because he is terrified and Benton did that to him.

“Do you remember why you moved here?” he asks. He has gone too far not to see this through. “You slipped into your Langoustini persona in front of your family _once_ and you left because you were _so afraid_ it would happen again.” Benton takes another step forward, desperately hoping Ray won’t step back, but he does. “You’re hardly even yourself anymore, Ray.”

“I don’t have to be,” Ray snaps. “I’m not with them anymore. I won’t go anywhere near them, do you think I’d let him hurt them, they are _scared_ of me and they should be.” He’s breathing hard now and finally looks away, running a hand over his head. “Fuck you, Benny.”

“Ray, Ray.” Benton takes another step closer and this time Ray doesn’t move away. Maybe he didn’t notice. “You hate Langoustini.”

“So what?” Ray is turned away, one hand going up to his face. He looks like he’s fighting tears. The mask is gone now; what remains is raw vulnerability.

“You don’t _want_ to be him. Why are you doing this?”

“Because he’s useful!” Ray is almost shouting. “Do you think I wanted this? But I can’t even…” He trails off, takes a deep breath. “I couldn’t even get through one hour at the office. It was all slipping away from me. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I just had no control. At all. I was five seconds from breaking down and ruining everything.”

“Ruining what?”

“ _Everything_ ,” Ray repeats. “I couldn’t handle a police station, but I could fucking handle Vegas, every day for almost two years.”

“And it almost destroyed you.”

“Well, maybe it did. Because this, this just happened. I didn’t even try, I just slipped back into it and it was easy. And Armando, he gets shit done. He’s fucking competent. So nobody likes him, but he’s good at what he does. Ray Vecchio is just useless.”

“Useless,” Benton echoes. “How can you say that?”

“Ever since I came back, I’ve been nothing but a burden. I’ve freaked out my family, I’ve made them worry for no reason and let them down, I’ve taken advantage of your friendship and kept you away from your duties and your _home_ and I have done nothing, absolutely _nothing_ to justify my existence since I left the hospital.” He sounds so desperate and Benton wants to hold him. He doesn’t dare.

“No person on Earth has to _justify_ being alive,” he says sternly. “And certainly not you, Ray. You are a good man, and I love you. So does your family.”

“My family has no choice. And you… You just have not goddamn clue, you know nothing. I have done terrible things and I did nothing to make up for it. I was even getting paid for hiding in this shitty place all day, taking up space.”

“God, Ray,” Benton mumbles. He had known it was important for Ray to go back to work, but not how badly he needed to feel like he could contribute something again. They should have talked about this ages ago. Benton should have paid closer attention, and he shouldn’t have put this confrontation off as long as he had.

Now his hand reaches for Ray’s shoulder and hovers there. “Can I touch you?” he asks, quietly, because he won’t do it without explicit permission, not now.

“No,” Ray says, his voice surprisingly strong. He steps away, out of Benton’s reach, and moves his hand over his eyes. “You don’t know, no, just leave me alone, Benny. Please.”

“I can’t, Ray. Not while you got it all wrong. You don’t have to prove yourself. You owe this world nothing.”

“Yes, I do. You don’t get it. And _I_ can’t get where I need to be, I can’t do anything. What the hell is even your problem? I finally do something useful and you complain about it?” He makes a harsh gesture and walks away, putting more distance between them. “Why do you even care?”

“Because I hate Armando,” Benton says honestly. Hate is a strong word; he doesn’t use it lightly.

“Then go away. In two weeks you’re gone anyway. You don’t have to deal with him.”

“But you do. Ray.” Benton takes another step towards the other man, willing him to understand. “I hate him because he hurts you.”

“God, Benny.” Ray turns and hides his face again. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what, Ray.”

“Don’t do this. Don’t…” He shakes his head. “Please. I just need. Leave me alone, okay? I need to.” He moves towards the door, grabbing his coat on the way. “Just shut up, stop it.”

He leaves and Benton doesn’t stop him. He understands that Ray needs to be alone for a moment, as much as he hates the thought. And this apartment is too small to allow them to put any distance between them. Taking walks is what they have always done when either of them needed some privacy.

Diefenbaker jumps up and slips out of the door behind Ray just before it falls shut, following him. His presence probably won’t cause offense. Benton is grateful.

Alone in the apartment he closes his eyes and makes a mental list of all the things he did wrong just now.

 

-

 

All of ten steps down the road, Ray has to accept that coming out here was a mistake. It’s dark already because the damned winter just won’t end, but it’s not that late. There are people around, smoking in open doorways or walking down the street in pairs or little groups. Not many of them, not in this neighborhood, but enough. People who can see him.

He should have gone to the roof instead. Why didn’t he go to the roof?

He needs to be alone, that’s the problem. Really alone, so he can break down. Armando has carried him through the last two weeks, whether Ray wanted him to or not, just like he carried him through Vegas, but Benny has thoroughly ruined that and left Ray with nothing but himself. And Ray Vecchio can’t carry anything at the moment. Maybe never again. (It feels like never again.)

He turns left at the long, narrow alley that eventually leads up to the industrial district and keeps walking. The cold air burns in his lungs. He’s moving too fast, but he can’t seem to slow down. He just knows that he has a goal and he needs to get there.

The industrial area is a place he is much more familiar with than his current neighborhood. It’s old, much of it is abandoned, and it’s bordering on a bad part of the city, which means that the police often end up there checking out the scene of a crime or the place where a body was found. Ray knows the hiding places. He just hopes that they aren’t taken yet.

The alley is long, stretching across three blocks. It’s dirty, too, and even during daytime it’s dark. No person in their right mind willingly takes it to get anywhere, let alone to the place where bodies are dumped, but Ray isn’t in his right mind, he doesn’t care, and no one bothers him on his way.

He has to stop three times to catch his breath and he isn’t even running. When he finally steps out into the large open space that was once a parking lot for trucks, he feels so exposed he almost crawls back into the alley. But he keeps going, aiming left, where they once found a kidnapped girl in a wooden box inside an empty garage.

It’s been a few years, but the garage is still there, and it’s still empty except for a lot of trash. No one’s ever bothered to repair the lock the police broke down that day, and it looks like no one is currently using this place to store kidnapping victims. It’s cold, dirty and miserable and exactly what Ray wants.

Once inside, he finds himself unable to take another step. He sinks to his knees, buries his face in his hands, and concentrates on breathing.

Walking here, he had to fight to keep himself from screaming, from crying, from doing anything to let things out, and now that he’s finally alone, he finds he can’t do it. It’s as if he’s kept things inside for so long he can’t release them anymore. All his instincts are keeping him quiet.

But he can kneel here in the dark and shake. And after a while, he begins to sob quietly. Just once or twice. Then he goes back to breathing.

It’s a noise that pulls him back to reality eventually; a quiet shuffle behind him, where the broken door is like an open mouth. Ray flinches and turns around while scrambling back, his heart racing. The part of him that is forever trapped in the underworld of Las Vegas panics and the rest of him isn’t far behind because this is a bad place and only bad people come here.

It’s Dief. Ray can make out his silhouette before the dark gray backdrop of the outside world. He’s just sitting there, looking at Ray, but Ray still panics further, because Dief followed him and he didn’t even notice, so anyone could have followed him, could be lurking just out of sight.

Rationality catches up with him soon enough. No one else is around. If Benny were there (which is perhaps the most terrifying thought of all), he wouldn’t lurk. He’d consider that impolite. And if anyone else were around, Dief would notice, and he wouldn’t have it. Still, Ray needs a long time to calm down, and when he finally does, he just starts to cry, helplessly and for no goddamn reason.

Dief whines softly and comes over. He sits before Ray and starts licking his face. It’s not something Ray usually appreciates, but right now he is so desperate and so alone that he just wraps his arms around the wolf and hugs him tight.

“Don’t pretend to care,” he mutters into the soft white fur. “I know you just like the taste of salt.”

Dief doesn’t even deny it. Ray is glad for the company anyway. He wonders if the wolf was send by Fraser or if he just decided to come by himself but right now he doesn’t even care.

“He’s right, you know,” he whispers. Of course Dief knows. He also can’t hear, but that doesn’t matter either. Ray hears. Maybe he needed to. Fraser is right. What Ray is doing is wrong. It’s that simple.

It doesn’t mean that he can do anything to change it.

He knows that going to work in this state is irresponsible. But at the same time, it’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s doing when Armando takes over. He’s effective like that. He’s good at his job. He gets shit done. He can’t stop just because it means he can’t look in the mirror anymore. And Benny doesn’t get that.

Dief probably doesn’t get it either. The difference is that Dief doesn’t care. Ray wishes he didn’t have to care either but he does. He does even when Armando takes over, which is all the time lately. Because Ray isn’t Armando, even when he acts like him. It’s not like he doesn’t hate himself when he’s like that, and he hates how it makes everything easier.

He didn’t plan for it and it scares him that it’s happening at all, but he should have expected this. After all, going back to work throws him into a situation he can’t handle in an environment where he can’t show any weakness. It’s hardly surprising that he instinctively pulls up all defenses and turns into the person who survived worse for far too long.

So he didn’t plan for this. It excuses nothing because he doesn’t stop. He can’t even say that he wouldn’t have done it anyway had he known what it would turn him into. Because going back to work, being useful, was an idea that kept him going. He can’t keep existing for existence’s sake and he can’t think of anything else to do. And yes, he loves Benny, and he knows Benny doesn’t lie about loving him, but even that is worth nothing when Ray can’t offer him anything. And he can’t.

So if he can’t do his job, there’s really no point to anything.

Diefenbaker huffs, gently. He draws back his head and licks Ray’s face some more.

“Sorry, buddy.” Ray draws back himself. “Most of that ended up in your fur.” He’s stiff with cold by now. His ears are hurting from the wind they were exposed to on the way here and it makes his ever-present headache even worse. “If you manage to lick your own neck, I’m gonna be impressed.” He makes to stand and sinks down again. “I don’t know what to do,” he tells the wolf. Another wave of despair rolls over him but he manages not to cry again.

“Okay, then.” He finally makes it to his feet. It’s an act of will, but it’s been a long time since moving was easy. “Let’s go home.” He scrubs his hands over his face, trying not to look so pathetic, but Benny will probably be able to smell what he’s been doing, or deduct it from the very specific wrinkles in his coat. Or something. He will also not say anything, so whatever.

He hopes Benny won’t say anything. He hopes he’ll just leave him alone. Ray is pretty much his own messed-up self right now, and Benny’d better be satisfied with that, because no matter what happened tonight, Ray still has to go to work tomorrow, and right now the thought is almost too much to bear.

 

-

 

Benny doesn’t say anything when they come back. He is sitting on the couch and apparently very busy staring at the turned-off TV. While he looks very relieved when they enter the apartment, he doesn’t comment on it at all. He only goes over to the kitchen to get the kettle and a pair of mugs.

Ray mutters his thanks when he is handed his tea. He doesn’t actually feel like tea, but Benny somehow seems to think that tea makes every situation at least a little bit better. Must be the British heritage in him. Anyway, Ray has put him through a lot and Benny’s been incredibly patient, so the least Ray can do for him is drink a freaking cup of tea.

It scalds his tongue.

Dief, meanwhile, gets a bowl full of food. It’s not feeding time, which supports Ray’s theory that he was in it for the bribe, but he doesn’t really care as long as the wolf doesn’t tell on him and his less-than-stellar performance in the garage. Maybe Ray should make him a sandwich.

But Dief doesn’t say anything and Benny doesn’t say anything either, and for that alone Ray could kiss him. He doesn’t do it because that would be unfair. Something started between them a while ago, sure, but that was before Benny (and even Ray) realized just how fucked up Ray really is. He’s not going to force his friend into a situation he doesn’t want anymore and is too polite to get out of.

Well. The last two weeks have created some distance between them, that much is for sure.

Ray’s ears are still hurting. Along with the headache and the tearing pain in his chest it makes him feel dizzy and miserable. Fortunately, his hands have warmed up from the mug he’s holding and he presses them to his ears, letting the warmth seep in. It feels a little better. He closes his eyes.

Everything else becomes background noise. Ray doesn’t drift off, but he drifts all the same – until large, warm hands carefully touch his and pull them away. A second later something soft is placed on his head and when he reaches up, Ray identifies it as the woolen cap he usually wears outside to keep his ears from getting this cold. It feels nice, but more than that, it’s very warm, lessening the cold in his ears and easing the pain better than his hands did. Ray realizes that Benny must have placed it on the heater to warm it up before he even got back home. Because he knew Ray’s ears would get cold.

It’s suddenly very hard not to burst into tears again. Ray doesn’t, but follows Benny’s gentle nudging until he’s lying half on top of his friend. “God, Benny,” he mumbles without opening his eyes. “This must be so hard for you. I’m so sorry. I keep whining and I never take into consideration how you must feel.”

Benny makes a soothing noise, somewhere above him. “It’s okay, Ray. Don’t worry about it.”

“Please, just go away. Just leave.”

Benny’s hand runs over Ray’s head and comes to rest over his eyes, blocking out the light of the ceiling lamp. “Try to sleep, Ray.”

Ray doesn’t try. He just waits in the dark, the rise and fall of Fraser’s chest underneath him like the waves of an ocean.

 

-

 

Ray is lying in a bed. That is the first thing he notices when he regains consciousness. He’s lying stretched out on his side and someone is behind him, their arm slung loosely over his waist. Ray stays very still, doing his best to keep breathing evenly, to not move.

He knows where he is and that it’s Benny behind him. He knows, and it doesn’t matter much. He woke up in a bed with someone bigger pressed against him and now he is too afraid to move.

The part of him that is rational is almost glad about that. Since Ray stayed still, Benny didn’t wake up. And if he’s careful, he can get out without waking his friend. Despite his sharp senses, Fraser is a very deep sleeper. Combined with the lack of locks on the door of his old apartment, that used to be something Ray worried about, and with good reason.

Now it works to his advantage. He slowly pushes away the covers and lifts the arm lying over him. Benny’s hand has come to rest by Ray’s thigh, his curled fingers very close to his crotch. Ray knows that it’s a coincidence and still has to swallow a few times before he can resume his mission of getting out of bed.

It works. He makes it out of the bed and the room and Fraser is none the wiser, sleeping on peacefully. Ray is shaking badly when he reaches the couch; for a minute he’s just kneeling on the floor between the couch and the table, his arms wrapped around himself as if he could physically hold himself together.

Dief comes over to him, sniffing his face before tilting his head. Ray scratches him between the ears. “I’m okay,” he whispers. “It’s fine. Don’t wake Fraser.”

Dief accepts that for the moment, but he doesn’t stop staring when Ray gets up and starts pacing, occasionally rubbing his face. His hands won’t stop shaking.

It’s not just waking up next to someone else that shook him; that was just the final straw to tear down an already brittle construction. He’s been under a bit of a strain lately, and under these circumstances he simply could not handle that brief, ridiculous and unjustified moment of feeling completely powerless.

Ray stops his pacing, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. New tears run down his face but he doesn’t care. Dief doesn’t care either. No one cares.

Power. That’s what it comes down to. In Vegas he had too much and yet none at all, and both conditions are eating away at him now. They did then, too, but he had to come home again and be himself to really suffer the consequences. Armando had too much fucking power over almost everything. Everyone feared him, and Ray had learned to use that fear to force people into doing things they didn’t want to do. Just like Mickey Iguana did with him.

It makes sense, too, in a sick and twisted kind of way. The Iguanas were the most powerful family in Vegas. The controlled most of the casinos, the prostitution rings, the drugs and weapon dealing. They were immensely powerful before most of them went down for their crimes, but it was the Bookman who ran their business for them. He was the public face of the family while not even being part of it. He was the one that people were scared of, while many didn’t even know what the Don of the family looked like.

The Iguanas actually preferred it that way. The mob in Vegas wasn’t exactly known for its subtlety, but some have recognized the value of anonymity. What it left them with, however, was one man who wielded a lot of power that wasn’t actually his. Mickey, the Don’s uncle and second in command, probably simply wanted to remind Armando that no matter how powerful he might seem in public, at the end of the day he’d still bend over for the Real Family. Regularly.

Ray sways on his feet and has to lean against the couch as a wave of dizziness and nausea washes over him. It’s not that different from what Armando, what _he_ has done to others countless of times. Small time gangsters, henchmen, people who were stupid enough to do business with the Family and were now caught in their web. He made them do things they hated, forced them to destroy things they loved, to remind them that he was in charge and they were nothing. And they did it, hating him and hating themselves, because they feared the consequences, with good reason.

One time, a man (George, his name was George) who smuggled weapons for the Iguanas didn’t want to play this game. They couldn’t make him humiliate himself that way, he told them, in front of everyone. Johnny had actually been delighted. An example, he’d said. Haven’t had an excuse to do that in a while.

The others got to watch, just so the lesson would stick. They were made to get rid of the remains.

If Ray throws up now, Benny will hear for sure.

God, he wants a drink. He wants it so badly he could cry. In fact, he’s crying again. Benny really has no idea how pathetic he is.

The stack of papers is still where he left it underneath the closet. It’s not the most brilliant hiding place on Earth, but it doesn’t have to be. Benny knows that if Ray doesn’t leave something lying around openly he doesn’t want him to look at it, and Ray knows that Benny will always respect that. His hands are trembling when he pulls the sheets out and they are trembling when he sits down at the table and picks up the pen.

For a long time he just stares at the paper and the almost illegible words that fill it. Sitting here, writing this has helped him through many a night. It helps him focus his thoughts, and it helps him find a sort of relief, in a manner of speaking. But it’s also a countdown, and in this moment he is very aware of it.

There wouldn’t be any point to it if it wasn’t.

Eventually, Ray sets the pen to the paper and begins to write.

 

-

 

When Benton wakes up he feels like someone had filled his limbs with lead and then nailed them to the mattress. He feels like he has slept forever, yet he is still tired. He hasn’t felt like this in a long time. Since his first stakeout, perhaps, when he got far too little sleep for far too long. He knows what this is. It’s his body demanding its right.

He should have better control than this.

But for several weeks his sleep has been uneasy. His usual sleep cycle has been destroyed by Ray’s lack of any sleep cycle at all. He stayed up late almost every night to keep the other man from being alone, and almost every morning, he woke up early and was driven out of bed by the underlying worry that never leaves him alone. His dreams have been bad. And the constant emotional tension is wearing him out.

Last night was particularly bad. It also showed him that he isn’t the only one worn out – Ray never even stirred when Benton carried him to bed; in fact, he was so still it was almost worrying. At that time, sleep didn’t seem like a possibility for Benton whose thoughts kept circling around their conversation and desperately searching for a solution that didn’t involve kidnapping Ray and dragging him to Canada in the trunk of a stolen car. He lay down with Ray because he had that irrational need to keep him safe, because he wanted to be able to sooth him if he had a nightmare, and perhaps (as a shameful and neglected part of him reluctantly admits) because he is feeling very alone and starved for any kind of physical contact.

He doesn’t even remember being tired, just exhausted. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. But sleep he did, deeply and without dreams, and now there’s light outside the window and Ray is gone. Benton is aware of that before he even opens his eyes. It doesn’t surprise him, only prompts a vague feeling of regret.

Stupid, he thinks as he forces himself to sit up. Ray doesn’t take well to waking up next to someone else most days. At least he didn’t panic this time, or else Benton would certainly have woken when Ray did. It’s a mild relief, but the lack of bad consequences doesn’t excuse his thoughtlessness.

A scratching noise at the door gets his attention. It’s followed by a soft whine, and then by a woof. Diefenbaker is trying to tell him something, and he’s impatient enough to wake him. So he’s either very hungry or he has to go out very urgently.

The fact that he’s trying to communicate with Benton through the door means that Ray isn’t in.

With a groan, Benton swings his legs over the side of the bed. He has no idea what time it is – the sky is clouded so heavily that he can’t judge by the quality of sunlight, and there is no clock in the bedroom. It’s possible that Ray has already gone to work. At the thought, something twists inside Benton. He should have woken up earlier.

As expected, he finds the living room empty. Dief whines softy and sticks to Benton as he walks over to the window to see if Ray’s car is still standing before the building. It isn’t.

Benton sighs. He picks up his father’s watch that he left on the bookshelf and frowns when he reads the time. It’s still half an hour before Ray has to be at the precinct. “I guess he couldn’t wait to get out of here,” he tells Diefenbaker, who is still staring up at him while treading nervously on the spot.

He doesn’t run to the door, so it’s unlikely that he has to go outside. Hunger, then. Benton is about to make a comment about that when he suddenly becomes aware that he and Ray didn’t get around to eating anything the night before, and so Dief didn’t get any leftovers. Benton had fed him some after he brought Ray home but obviously that wasn’t enough.

So Benton starts off towards the kitchen, only to find Dief’s food bowl right next to the fridge, still half-filled with food. Benton stares down at it, not understanding for a second. He identifies the leftovers from two days ago. Dief had been particularly fond of that evening’s meal, but he hadn’t gotten much of it since Benton deemed it unhealthy.

Now, Diefenbaker whines and looks vaguely ashamed.

Since he probably didn’t open the fridge and the container and fed himself, it’s obvious what happened. Ray wanted to get out and he didn’t want an overprotective wolf on his tail, so he distracted him with food. And Diefenbaker willingly let himself be distracted.

But he hadn’t eaten up and gone to wake Benton instead, which means that he’s worried about something. Unfortunately, he can’t really tell Benton what it is, other than that he’s having vague and undefined concerns.

Benton rubs his eyes, suddenly even more disconcerted. He considers calling the 34th just to see if Ray is really there. Even though he doesn’t really _want_ him to be there. Perhaps Ray just took the car for a spin to clear his head after another bad night. He never thinks to leave a message for Benton when he takes off for a while.

Except there is a sheet of paper on the table by the window that wasn’t there last night. Benton saw it before, but it didn’t really register. He really hasn’t gotten enough rest lately.

Going over there now, Benton sees that it’s not one sheet of paper, but several. And all of them are filled with small, shaky handwriting that bears little resemblance to Ray’s usual, confident script. Benton picks them up and, with a growing feeling of dread, begins to read.


	5. Chapter 5

The first place Benton calls is indeed Ray’s workplace, but he has no hope of him being there, and he’s right. An irritated sounding civilian aide named Rene tells him that no, Lieutenant Vecchio hasn’t shown up for work, but he’s not that late yet, so she’ll give him another five minutes before she’s going to be really annoyed.

The second number he calls belongs to Ray’s family. He hesitates before he does that because he doesn’t want to worry them and it’s unlikely that Ray is there, but maybe he called, at least. The sad fact is that Benton can’t think of any other place to ask.

It’s Ray’s sister Maria who picks up the phone. He tries to sound neutral, but can tell that she isn’t fooled. In fact, by the time he ends the call she sounds close to tears. Maybe it was stupid of him to think that as long as he never told them about Ray’s bad days they wouldn’t worry as much.

Eventually he takes Diefenbaker and runs outside. Dief picks up Ray’s scent easily enough, but loses it at the first intersection. Even if he can find it again, there’s no telling how far Ray has driven. Following him on foot would take far too much time.

No. He needs to think. He _knows_ Ray, or so he likes to believe, so he will be able to figure out where he went. Panic isn’t going to help.

He needs to _think_. He used to be good at that.

Only when he makes his way back to the apartment does he realise that he’s still holding the crumpled paper in his hand, filled with far too many words that are sometimes almost impossible to read. It’s obvious that Ray was suffering from great emotional distress when he wrote them, and yet the words are dispassionate and matter-of-fact. It’s an account of presumably everything that Ray has done in Vegas, everything he caused or didn’t prevent, in meticulous, graphic detail. Ray didn’t pull his punches – when he wrote it he clearly wanted Benton to know just how horrible it was – and yet it reads like a police report more than anything else. There is nothing personal in there, no explanation or justification, just a clinical description of acts and their consequences.

Amongst the account of all the things that he did, with no word did Ray mention what was done to _him_. Benton isn’t surprised. After first reading it, he wasn’t anything, except sick.

Ray was right when he said that Benton couldn’t imagine what he had done. He knows it now and he still can’t imagine, not really. But Ray was also wrong, because he expected Benton to turn away from him once he knew.

All Benton can think about, right now, is how Ray once said that the day he told him everything would be the day he ate his gun.

The fact that he doesn’t keep a gun at hand, not even after he went back to work, is only a small consolation. Ray is not a very literal person. There are too many alternatives.

What Benton believes, _needs_ to believe, is that Ray won’t give up that easily. He knows what his death would do to Benton, and even if he thinks that after reading his confession Benton wouldn’t care, he’d still have to take his family into consideration. Perhaps he simply needed to get away from Benton first, so he can be on his own and consider… further steps.

Benton storms back into the apartment, his thoughts racing. A place where Ray can go, where he’s alone, where he has some distance. He looks around and quickly finds what he’s looking for: Ray’s wallet, in its usual spot on top of the closet. Benton opens it, flips through it. Ray didn’t take his credit card or any cash for what he can tell. So he can’t have found refuge in a hotel, and he certainly didn’t go visit anybody.

He could be somewhere in the open, in an old warehouse or at the outskirts of the city, but Benton doubts it. No, Ray is somewhere with a lock, he’s sure of it.

But where? There is no place for him to hide at the station, nor is he going to sneak into his family’s home and risk discovery. No, it would be something that’s empty, like…

Like Turnbull’s place. Benton can’t believe that it took him so long. The tiny apartment is empty and there is no risk of anyone coming there anytime soon.

It’s also a long distance away. Benton has just enough presence of mind to grab Ray’s wallet before he runs down the stairs and sprints down the street, ready to get on the first bus he sees or stop the next available taxi.

In the end, he finds a bus that takes him in the right direction and then jumps out and gets into the first taxi he sees. It’s expensive, and he’s aware that it’s not his money he’s spending, but all he can think about is how he left his service revolver in that apartment when he moved out because he didn’t want it anywhere near Ray even then.

Altogether it takes him over half an hour to get to the building. He thinks Mrs. Lee might have greeted him from the open door of her apartment as he ran past it, but he can’t even say for sure if he’s seen her at all.

Ray doesn’t have a key for this place, but he can pick locks. It’s not a hindrance. He can pick the lock to Benton’s trunk as well, if he wants to. He can do so many things.

He’s been gone for so long and Benton’s heart is racing as he pushes open the door, dreading what he will find.

Ray’s coat is draped over the cot Benton used to sleep on, the only piece of furniture that remained. Ray is sitting on the floor beside it, and he looks shocked when Benton barges in; shocked enough to jump to his feet and take a stumbling step back. “What–” he begins, but that’s as far as he gets before Benton reaches him and pulls him into a crushing embrace.

“Ray,” Benton says, trying to find words. “Ray. Ray. You’re okay. You scared me.”

“Benny.” Ray’s voice sounds chocked. Maybe Benton is holding him too tightly. “What are you doing here?”

“I read your account on Vegas. I was so worried when I couldn’t find you.”

“You were _worried_?” Ray’s voice takes on a shrill tone. He struggles out of Benton’s hold and takes a few steps back, but the wall makes sure he doesn’t make it far. His whole body is tense. “Are you here to arrest me?”

The words hit Benton completely out of the blue. “What? Of course not? Ray, why would you think that?”

“Why? You said you read it!”

“I did. I don’t see–”

“I’m a murderer, Fraser! I tortured people. I ordered children killed. I sat by and watched a girl get raped by three guys and later get shot in the head.” He laughs hoarsely when he sees Benton’s expression. “What, did I forget to mention that? They finally let her go, and on her way out of the villa they shot her from behind. They thought it was funny.”

“It’s not your fault, Ray.”

“The hell it isn’t! I could have stopped it, how does that make it not my fault?”

“You could have _tried_ to stop it, and then what? You would have been killed and everything would have been in vain. You did what you _had_ to do.”

“Why? Because it was my job? In case you don’t get that, it was Armando’s job, too! How does that excuse _him_?”

“That’s not the same. You know that, Ray. You didn’t have a choice.”

Ray nods slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I get that. Just like the guys working for the Iguanas didn’t have a choice but to sell drugs and beat up people. Because _I_ forced them to do it.”

“Ray.” Benton lifts his hands and tries to look as non-threatening as possible. He doesn’t know how he can make Ray understand when everything is all twisted in his mind. “You didn’t want to do any of these things.”

“But I still did them! The blood is on these hands and no one else’s.” He raises his hands to show them to Benton, palms forward, and Benton can see that there is indeed blood on the right one. It seems to have run there from the knuckles, and Ray isn’t straightening the fingers of that hand.

“Ray, Ray. Listen to me. You need to stop this. You can’t keep thinking this way. What you did was very brave and it saved a lot of people. All the people the Iguanas would have hurt in the future, right now, if you hadn’t done this. And they will be punished for their crimes.”

“They didn’t do anything worse than I did,” Ray insists. He bites back a sob. “And I got a promotion out of it. How’s that for justice?”

“I think it is very just,” Benton says softly. “Ray, please. Calm down.” He takes a step towards his friend. “Don’t run from me, please.”

“Don’t play with me,” Ray spits out. “You know everything now. How can you even look at me? Arrest me, or leave me alone.”

“I am not going to leave you, Ray.” Benton takes another step closer and Ray can’t get away because his back is to the wall. “You told me I’d turn my back on you if I knew, and I told you I wouldn’t. And I’m not.”

“Is that what this is about? Proving that you’ve been right?”

Benton tries not to be hurt by the accusation. Ray can’t help himself right now. He understands that. “This is me proving that I still love you, and that I don’t blame you.” He holds out his hand. “Please, Ray. I’m not leaving here without you.”

Ray is breathing hard. He’s very pale, and Benton can see that it’s not only stress and lack of sleep that are causing his complexion. “You’re scared, aren’t you?” Ray whispers.

“Yes, Ray. I am very scared.”

Ray nods as if he’s got it all figured out. “You’re scared that I will blow my brains out. You’d feel guilty if you didn’t prevent that. Of course.”

“Will you stop that?” The words come out harsher than Benton intended. He takes the final two steps to close the distance between them and takes Ray by the arms, trapping him. “Will you stop thinking so badly of yourself, and of me? I love you. I don’t want to lose you. Is that so hard to understand?”

Ray just keeps staring at him. He’s shaking all over. “Yes,” he whispers.

“Oh Ray,” Benton says sadly. He pulls the other man into a hug and this time Ray allows it, even though he doesn’t return it. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” Ray’s voice is very quiet. This close, Benton can feel the unnatural heat of his body.

“For everything. For not helping you.”

“You helped. You did far too much. I can’t stand it because I don’t deserve you. Please just go away. I promise I won’t do anything you’ll have to feel bad about, just leave. That’s how you can help me.”

“No, it isn’t, Ray. And it’s not going to help _me_. I’m afraid I must insist on being selfish, this time.”

Ray actually laughs; a hoarse and desperate sound. “ _This time_? What, you suddenly decided to pay back all the money you made me give you over the years?” He shakes his head. “What does it matter, anyway? In two weeks you’re gone anyway.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Now, Ray, will you please come home with me? So we can talk? It’s cold here and you’re not well.”

Ray doesn’t answer. He’s clearly fighting with himself and Benton isn’t sure he really understands that his friend will not leave without him.

“Please,” Benton tries again. He brings some distance between them, just enough to look Ray in the eyes. “I think I lost Diefenbaker somewhere on the way here and I need to find him before he is run over by a car. Or finds a bunch of strays to get in trouble with.”

Ray bites his lips. He looks torn. But Benton knows his friend and his heart that is, at its very core, gentle and caring. He allowed his anxiousness to show to let Ray know that he is worried about the wolf who he cannot look for as long as Ray refuses to leave here. He knows eventually the other man will give in.

And he does.

 

-

 

Ray is quiet on the way back. He doesn’t even protest when Benton decides to drive, but then, the car is not a 1971 Buick Riviera, so maybe he doesn’t care if Benton damages it with his lack of driving skills. For the most part he sits on the passenger seat, huddled in his coat, and shivers. The heat in the car doesn’t work.

With Benton driving, it takes even longer to get home. He does keep an eye open for Dief who he last saw getting on the bus, but isn’t surprised when he doesn’t spot the wolf until he pulls up before the apartment building.

Dief is sitting in front of the entrance and looks at him accusingly but refrains from commenting. He doesn’t even bother Ray when Benton pulls him out of car and helps him up the stairs. Not for the first time, he really wishes that the elevator was working. Ray is bathed in sweat and breathing hard, and Benton is fighting the urge to just pick him up and carry him.

Once upstairs, Benton makes Ray sit down so he can look at the bruised hand. It’s very obvious that his friend punched a wall at some point, and it was not a dry wall that yielded to the force of the blow. The knuckles are very bloody, although the blood as long since dried, and Ray flinches every time Benton touches his hand. Perhaps he has broken something.

It doesn’t keep him from disappearing inside the bathroom for half an hour, where he clumsily washes up using only one hand, brushes his teeth, retches over the toilet for five minutes, and brushes his teeth again.

While he is gone, Benton calls the 34th to let them know that Ray is sick and won’t be in for work for the rest of the week. Then he calls Ray’s family to let them know that he found Ray and that he’s doing more or less okay, just a little feverish and in need of rest. It’s just as big a lie as he can justify. All things considered, the situation could be worse.

Finally, Ray comes out of the bathroom and Benton helps him dress in more comfortable clothes, wraps his injured hand in gauze, and tucks him into bed.

Ray doesn’t protest. He’s quiet and pliant, beyond the point of mere physical exhaustion. He doesn’t try to sleep, though, but lies curled on his side, his bandaged hand stretched out, staring into the void.

Benton hesitates a long time before he gently nudges his friend to make room for him. Ray complies without protest. He doesn’t relax into Benton’s arms, but he doesn’t tense up either. Perhaps it doesn’t matter to him whether Benton is there or not, but Benton needs to hold him.

He thinks about kissing Ray, just a casual little gesture, but the time isn’t right. Instead he just holds the shivering man close and gently strokes his head until sleep finally comes.

 

-

 

During his stay in Chicago, Benton has met several doctors and nurses, both through cases and because he and his friends have the terrible habit of getting hurt a lot. Not all of those doctors earned his respect, even fewer his trust, but some did, and some even seem to believe they owe him something. Therefore, Doctor Suzie Lexington immediately agrees to drop in after her shift at the hospital to have a look at Ray.

Benton doesn’t think his friend is that badly off, but he’s definitely sick and he would rather have someone check him over and make sure he’s going to be okay. Ray’s hand doesn’t look good, either. When Benton carefully takes off the bandage, he finds it black and purple and very swollen.

Ray sleeps through it, stirring once or twice but never opening his eyes.

Benton met Suzie about a year ago, when her fiancé was framed for drug dealing and he and Ray Kowalski helped her clear his name. She’s a stern woman with a hard face, but it softens whenever she’s taking care of a patient. With Ray it’s no different. Benton is worried that his friend might wake up while she is checking him over, but Ray doesn’t seem to notice her careful touches at all. It’s a relief. He probably would have reacted badly.

He warns Suzie to be careful but doesn’t give her any details of what’s wrong with Ray other than that he’s been under enormous stress for a while. She accepts it without any comment, just as Benton expected. There is a reason why it was her he called.

According to Suzie, Ray has a fever and the onset of a lung infection that she warns Benton to be very cautious about after he tells her of Ray’s gunshot injury. Ray is in severe need of food and rest, which Benton already knew, and two bones in his right hand are at the very least cracked, which he suspected. The doctor is of the opinion that Ray would be better off under observation at the hospital, but while Benton generally agrees, he doesn’t want to subject his friend to that unless he absolutely has to.

She doesn’t seem happy about it but doesn’t press the issue. Instead, she gives him a bottle of antibiotics with the order to make Ray take them until the infection has gone away completely. She also gives him some painkillers and a box of pills that will help Ray sleep . Benton isn’t sure he will be able to make this friend take any of that but he accepts them anyway.

“What about you?” Suzie asks when she is about to go. “You don’t look too hot yourself.” Her face changes from the stern standard expression to the gentle patient expression while she looks at him and it makes Benton uncomfortable. He makes a vague gesture.

“I am fine, Suzie, thank you. I’m merely worried about my friend. He has been unwell for quite some time.”

“And that gets to you, too, eventually,” she says in a no-nonsense tone of voice. “You need to look out for yourself, too, Constable. I don’t know what’s going on, but I can tell it’s serious, and it’s affecting both of you. Don’t make the mistake of neglecting your own wellbeing over this.”

Benton smiles. It probably looks a little bland. “I am quite all right. I have never been prone to sickness.”

“I’m not strictly speaking about physical health here. Take it from someone who knows, Fraser. You should get help. And not just for your friend. Or else you won’t be of any help to him much longer.”

“I’m not sure I am of much help now,” he admits, almost against his will.

She smiles. “Don’t worry. I am pretty sure things are better with you here than they would be without you.” Her smile disappears. “But heed my warning. Take care of yourself, because I can tell he’s not the only one who suffers.”

“I will,” he promises. His first instinct is to play it down, but that would only prolong the discussion, and besides that, he’s not entirely sure she doesn’t have a point.

Suzie doesn’t look like she believes him, but she lets it go for the moment. With a final order to call her or get Ray to a hospital should he get worse, she leaves.

Ray sleeps the entire day and the following night. Benton reluctantly shakes him awake a few times to make him drink something and once to half-carry him to the bathroom. He gives him a cool shower to bring down his temperature and then gets him back to bed where he sinks back into sleep immediately.

Benton hopes that this is just the exhaustion getting the better of Ray, his body demanding the rest it has been denied for so long. He doesn’t sleep much himself, just dozes a little here and there. He knows he is doing the exact opposite of what Doctor Lexington told him to do, but he can’t see how he can do anything else right now.

The truth is, he can feel the situation wearing away at him. For months now he has been feeling little else but worry, hopelessness and dread. Even when he was out with Dief or visiting Ray Kowalski he could never entirely let go of the worry about Ray Vecchio that usually drove him home sooner than he had to. And he didn’t get enough sleep, had nightmares. Ray’s lack of eating habits also left their mark on him. While Benton still eats a lot more than his friend, it’s been less than usual, and he blames that for the headache and general lack of energy that plague him more and more often.

He really needs to take better care of himself. Suzie is right, he’s not going to be of any use to Ray if he works himself into a collapse.

It’s just that right now is a very bad time for that.

He still makes an effort to go and eat, and he even goes through the trouble of eating healthy. He calls Ray Kowalski and asks him to pick up Diefenbaker from Willie’s and deliver him here after work because he doesn’t dare leave Ray alone for as long as it would take to do it himself, and while he waits he lies on the bed beside his friend and tries to read.

It’s hard to concentrate. His thoughts keep wandering, just like Ray’s do in all those long nights. Benton keeps thinking about too many things. The past. The future. Things he should have said or done. He makes plans for telling Ray Kowalski what is really going on and also how much Ray Vecchio means to him and what happened between them on New Year’s Eve and how he wishes they could try again and how  afraid he is they never may, but he already knows that he will not utter a single of these words.

Ray Kowalski is the closest friend he has besides Ray Vecchio, and even with him he cannot share his problems.

Benton sighs, trying not to feel depressed and not entirely succeeding. He tries to suppress the feeling the way he has all his life, but even that doesn’t work. For a long time he looks at Ray’s pale, lax face. His temperature hasn’t really gone down yet, but it hasn’t gone up either. At least this way, Ray is finally getting some sleep, thought Benton isn’t sure how restful it will be in the end.

At least he doesn’t seem to have any nightmares. But then, not all nightmares come with tossing and turning.

Eventually, he shifts and leans down until his ear is on Ray’s chest to listen to his breathing. He’s careful not to disturb Ray or to restrict the rise of his chest in any way. Somewhere in there is a bullet that was meant for Benton For a second he is overcome by the memory of that moment when he heard the shot and looked up to see Muldoon disappear and Ray go down.

The next minutes, which included running over to where his friend had fallen only to find him unconscious with blood running down his chin, are easily among the most terrible of Benton’s life.

After twenty months apart with no contact at all, after coming back to the impression that Benton must have moved on with his life and left him behind, Ray had still taken a bullet for him without hesitation. Knowing what he does now about Ray’s time in Vegas and the guilt he is unable to bear, Benton can’t help but wonder if Ray hadn’t tried to throw his life away on purpose.

It’s unfair to think that. Benton knows that Ray has acted out of an honest desire to protect his friend from harm, the way he first did within one day of knowing the Mountie. But perhaps this time he had thought that dying in the process would be convenient rather than the tremendous sacrifice that it should be.

The doorbell rings, pulling him out of his increasingly dark thoughts, and Benton leaves them with a measure of relief. With a last look to make sure that Ray is still deeply asleep he closes the bedroom door and opens the one to the hall where Ray Kowalski is waiting with Diefenbaker.

They exchange a few words in quiet voices, but it doesn’t take long. Ray steals a few curious glances into the room but he understands why Benton doesn’t invite him inside. Before he leaves, he warns Benton not to go back to Canada without saying goodbye.

Benton promises, and doesn’t say that he isn’t sure he will go back to Canada at all.

He wants to. He misses his home, maybe more now than ever before. Canada and his cabin in the wilderness are associated in his mind with the sort of peace, tranquillity and balance that he is desperately missing in his current situation. He wants to go back to work, feel like he can actually make a difference again.

But he is not going to abandon Ray for it. If he were going to do that, he might just as well have left his friend in that apartment with the gun.

Benton looks at his watch. Another half hour before he has to wake Ray and give him his antibiotics. Perhaps he can even make him eat something. And afterwards, if Ray goes back to sleep, so will Benton. He will have to risk that. Despite having done virtually nothing all day, he feels exhausted and worn.

For lack of anything better to do, he settles back on the bed with his book. It’s a faded science fiction novel that Ray found somewhere, and it’s written in French. Ray doesn’t speak French, nor has he ever shown any interest in the language, but Benton knows he’s been learning, a little, in the past few weeks. He suspects that it’s still not for any desire to understand French but simply for the need to fill the nights with _something_.

It’s not something Benton would ever have imagined Ray doing, though. There are so many things in Ray’s life now that just don’t seem to fit.

 _How do you pick up the threads of an old life?_ The words run through Benton’s mind unbidden, and he needs a moment to remember where they come from. _The Lord of the Rings_. The end of the story, when Frodo comes home to the Shire only to realize that the journey to destroy the Ring has changed him too much to fit in there anymore. _How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back?_

Maybe Ray has simply changed too much to ever go back. He’s been trying to go back to his family, to his job, the city he grew up in, but the place that waited for him in his family, his job and his city is designed for the man he used to be before he left. Maybe both he and Benton have been trying to connect pieces that just don’t fit anymore for far too long.

Ray can’t go back to who he was, so unless the world he knew adjusts to the way he has changed, there is simply no way any of this can end well.

For Frodo, the solution lay in going away with the Elves. Now, Ray is no Hobbit and Benton is no Elf, and he’s only going to Canada, but by now he is convinced that starting over somewhere different where no one knows him is the only way Ray can survive in the long run. Even if he hasn’t accepted that yet.

It’s another discussion they are going to have, and soon, he decides. Not now, though. Now he has to wake Ray up and make him take his medicine.

When he does that, Ray is still so weak and out of it that Benton has to hold him upright so he can drink. He helps his friend into new clothes because the old ones are soaked in sweat, changes the sheets while Ray dozes on the couch, and finally tugs him into bed again. In the end, he climbs into bed as well, positioning himself between Ray and the open door. The last thing he notes before drifting off is the shift in the mattress when Diefenbaker jumps up and settles down beside him.

 

-

 

When Ray fully wakes up for the first time in what feels like forever, Fraser tells him that he has been out of it for almost five days. He accepts the information without much interest. Right now, his interest is limited to the fact that he’s thirsty, miserable, and he really wants a shower.

Benny helps with all of those things. He even gets in the shower with Ray, which is really nice of him since Ray isn’t sure he could stand on his own right now. He also has the vague impression it’s not the first time they did this, but his memory fails him when he tries to summon _more_ than vague impressions.

Afterwards he’s sitting on the closed toilet while Benny is drying him off, and he can’t help a soft snort when his thoughts finally catch up with the situation. “This is not how I imagined us finally getting all naked with each other,” he declares. Then he looks away, not sure the comment is at all welcome.

A towel is dropped on his head and rubbed all over, which seems singularly pointless considering he doesn’t exactly have to worry about wet strands of hair dripping all over him.

“Nor I,” Benny says somewhere on the other end of that towel. “But there will be other opportunities.” After a second’s hesitation he adds, “If you want them.”

Ray swallows, his throat suddenly closing up. “I didn’t think you would.”

“Aw, Ray.” Benny pulls away the towel and helps Ray to his feet. “We will talk about this when you are better.”

That seems like a good idea. Ray’s thoughts are still rather jumbled and his emotions are all over the place. He doesn’t think he’s currently up for something as simple as a discussion about dinner.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to be. Benny just leaves him on the couch, wrapped in blankets while he goes and prepares food without any discussion being necessary. Ray feels like he hasn’t eaten in days, which is probably true, but he also doesn’t feel like eating now, even though he’s hungry.

What Benny serves him in the end doesn’t make him feel any more like eating. It’s just a piece of toast and a bowl of soup that tastes almost like nothing. He still eats as much as he can without complaining because Benny’s been taking care of his sick ass for a week and the least he can do is not making things more difficult than they have to be.

At least Benny made real food for himself. Ray is glad about that, and he’s sure Diefenbaker would be as well, if he were anywhere to be found.

“Where’s the hair factory?” he asks and can’t believe he didn’t notice until now. “With Willie?”

“No, Willie’s in school. He’s with Maggie and her family.”

Ray needs a moment to connect that name with a face. The face he comes up with is very hairy. “You mean he’s with _Maggie_ Maggie? Doing what? Making more mini-Diefs?”

“No, Ray. I have been assured that Maggie has been spayed since the last incident. And Dief knows the consequences of causing that kind of trouble again.”

Ray winches. “You’d do that to your best friend?”

“Well, Ray, technically you’re my best friend, too.”

“Why does that not make me feel any better right now? Do I need to warn Kowalski?”

“You’re perfectly safe, Ray. Unless you dump a litter of puppies on me.”

“Well, technically Dief dumped it on Maggie’s family.”

“Which is why he still has his manhood.”

Ray winces again. There is just something so profoundly _wrong_ about that idea. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

Benny smirks in that way he has when he’s being deliberately evil. “What I would do doesn’t matter. What matters is what Dief _believes_ I would do.”

“I won’t tell on you, then.”

“I appreciate that.”

It’s nice, having a normal conversation like this. But it’s exhausting, too, which is just ridiculous. Ray feels like he could fall asleep any moment now. It’s funny how suddenly his problem is that he sleeps _too much_.

And coughs too much. Ray puts the half-eaten bowl of soup aside so he can concentrate on the third violent coughing fit of the hour, and when he’s done, Benny has that pinched look on his face again.

“I should stop smoking,” Ray says with an attempt of a smile.

“You should,” Benny confirms.

Ray really should. With his lungs being troublesome as they are, smoking is pretty much the last thing he should do, but so far he never saw a reason to care. He still doesn’t. He’s probably not going to stop.

When Benny is gone, he’s probably going to do it a lot more.

The thought wakes him up momentarily. He’s lost almost a week, so it’s only a few more days before Benny has to go back. The thought of losing him is even more unbearable than it was before. And it’s a terrible thing to think about right now because Ray is weak and shaky and his head and chest ache and his hand hurts like hell and if he keeps thinking about this, or anything at all, he’s going to cry.

In the end he saves what is left of his dignity by curling up on the couch and hiding his head underneath the blanket as he pretends to sleep.

 

-

 

Another three days tickle away while Ray gets his strength back up. While he’s feeling better every day, he’s also feeling worse with every improvement of his health. The less miserable he feels physically, the more he thinks about his situation, about Benny leaving, and about the fact that Benny now knows about all the horrible things Ray has done.

He tries _not_ to think about that. Every time he does, he has the urge to either start running and never stop, or to jump off the roof of the building. (He thinks about it all the time.)

They never discuss it. Benny probably thinks Ray isn’t up for that yet, and he’s right, but he’s also wrong. Ray _needs_ to discuss it, he needs to put an end to this, but he also feels that he can’t make Benny understand why he should leave and never look back, damn stubborn Canadian that he is.

He’d thought getting it out, having Benny _know_ would help, mostly because he didn’t think he’d have to deal with him afterwards, one way or another. Now, whenever his thoughts wander to the abhorrent crimes he committed, he’s not only overwhelmed by guilt and shame but also by the realization that Fraser knows what he did.

He can’t sleep. At all. Or rather, he wouldn’t be able to sleep if not for the nice little pills that Benny gives him. They don’t have the same kick as the stuff in the hospital, but they work well enough, and after the first night Ray is desperate enough to actually take them.

They are in a little box, just two of them, and when Ray takes one another magically appears while he isn’t looking. He never comments on the fact that Benny keeps the rest of the pills safely away from him and tries not to be hurt by this lack of trust because he kind of deserves it.

God, what Benny must think of him after that stunt he pulled the other day. (He just really didn’t expect his friend to do anything other than pack his things and go back to Canada, possibly with Kowalski in tow to play hide-and-seek in the arctic wilderness.)

Other than the sleeping pills, Benny is very serious about the antibiotics. Ray thinks he’d probably force them down his throat if he refused to take them. Apparently they were given to him by a doctor friend of his whose visit Ray has no recollection of.

He’s grateful, though. From what he understands, if Benny hadn’t found a doctor to check him over at home, Ray would have woken up in a hospital, and that really doesn’t bear thinking about. Benny is still going to make him go to the doctor tomorrow to have his hand checked out. It’s pretty useless at the moment, with every movement hurting so much he wants to scream, and since he’s right-handed it makes sense to have it treated before he goes back to work.

The thought of work is another cause for terror. Exactly for that reason, Ray wants to get back to it as quickly as possible. Before Fraser is gone. Just so he can get back into it before he is all alone.

And if he falls back into channelling Armando all the time, at least then it will be easier for Benny to leave.

So he will get his hand checked out tomorrow and be at the precinct the day after that. Ray takes a deep breath and then another one, trying to calm his nerves. He just has to make it for another two minutes, until the sleeping pill kicks in.

He should stop taking them. He’s already getting far too used to how convenient they are.

Nevertheless, here he is, in bed at eight because he feels so tired and his head is killing him and these pills help him actually find sleep. Maybe they aren’t so bad. So what if he gets used to the stuff? What if he gets hooked? It’s not like he has any particular reason to avoid that, besides all the principles that he has thrown out of the window anyway.

They even help with the headache, a little. Or at least they help him ignore it. He hasn’t gotten to the point where he willingly takes the painkillers yet, though he’s been contemplating aspirin for a while. It would help with the hand, too.

Sometimes he actually appreciates the pain, because it helps him focus on something other than the things he doesn’t want to think about, but right now, he could do without. Ray lies in the dark, trying not to think and not to feel. Fraser taught him how to distract himself by focusing on just one of his senses and he tries that now. Closes his eyes and concentrates on what he hears. A car going by outside the street. A siren in the distance – an ambulance, by the sound of it. Water running through the pipes because someone in the building has opened a tap. And on the other side of the door, Fraser talking to Dief, too quiet for Ray to make out the words.

It’s kind of humiliating to be in bed before Fraser.

Not long before Fraser, though. Just a few minutes later, Ray can hear his friend in the bathroom, and then the bedroom door opens and Benny sneaks in, trying to be quiet. Without a word, Ray shifts to the side of the bed, to signal he’s still awake and that it’s okay for Benny to join him if he wants to.

A moment later, the mattress shifts as the other man climbs onto the bed with him. A part of Ray is glad, another part of him feels guilty. Even more so when he shifts backwards and seeks out the warmth of Benny’s body almost against his will. A strong arm wraps around him from behind and it’s almost like that brief time between their disastrous attempt at making love and Ray’s equally disastrous return to work, when he managed to just feel safe here.

But Ray isn’t good for Benny, and he can’t offer him anything to make this worth the effort. Benny is going to go back to Canada in a few days; they will probably never see each other again after that, and Ray can’t allow him to get too attached. It’s hard for his friend to let go once he loves someone. Almost impossible. And right here and now, it’s Ray’s responsibility to protect him from that.

Despite easily connecting to everyone he meets, at his heart, Fraser is desperately lonely and starved for intimacy and love. Ray has to be careful not to take advantage of that. It would make him no better than Victoria.

It’s just so hard, right now, at this moment when he’s dozy from the pills and incapable of forming a coherent thought, not to take everything Benny so naively offers him and just let himself be held.

No more than that, though. Never again. Benny said they’d talk about it when Ray is better, but Ray has actually been avoiding that conversation. He doesn’t want to lie to Fraser, but he also can’t tell him the truth. It wouldn’t be fair.

Just a few more days, he thinks as he sinks into sleep to the sensation of Benny stroking his head. Everything will get better for Benny once he’s gotten away from Ray. Ray can’t do an awful lot of good right now, but he can save his friend from being saddled with him for all the wrong reasons.

 

-

 

The weather takes a turn for the worse about five minutes before Ray and Fraser are leaving for Ray’s appointment. The whole week the sky has been clear. But now it starts snowing, and it snows hard. And Ray can’t drive with his busted hand. It makes the trip to the hospital all kinds of interesting.

Ray didn’t even know Fraser could curse so much. Sure, they are polite, Canadian curses that peek at ‘Darn‘ but there is a constant stream of them. Also, calm and well-mannered suggestions to other drivers on how to improve their behavior on the road. Ray can’t help but snicker a lot and he almost tells Benny how much he loves him. There’s just something about the Mountie acting like a human being (or in this case like the impossibly polite version of a human being) that gets him every time.

The cold air bites into his lungs when he climbs out of the car. He actually likes the cold. Not the long nights and gray weather that go with it, but the cold. It was never cold in Vegas.

Unfortunately, the cold also makes his chest hurt and causes another coughing fit. Which in turn causes Benny to have that expression again, which prompts another discussion about just what he’s going to tell the doctor once Ray can actually breathe again.

Fraser, of course, is blowing the whole coughing thing out of proportions. Ray’s new standard for measuring his health is that as long as he doesn’t cough up blood, it’s not that bad.

It’s another battle to get Fraser to wait for him in the waiting room instead of accompanying Ray to the doctor’s office. He can be such a mother hen, it’s infuriating. And in the end, Ray could have let him come after all, because two minutes into the doctor looking at his hand, he has another coughing fit that apparently sounds wrong to medically trained ears and makes sure that he’s stuck in a different department of the hospital all day.

Ray actually avoided going to his usual doctor on purpose, just to avoid exactly this situation. Even so he would have left right after getting the light cast the first guy slapped on his hand, but Benny insists and won’t  let him escape. When Ray suggests he go and visit his other friends in the city instead, he just looks hurt, like he thinks Ray doesn’t want him around anymore.

Ray suspects he does that on purpose, as a form of emotional blackmail. Unfortunately, it works. Every damn time.

So they are stuck together and Fraser has a first-row seat to Ray losing it. It isn’t so bad in the beginning. Coming here, having his hand treated, getting out – he could have done that. But like this, there are far too many waiting rooms and too many people around him, and too many doctors and nurses poking at him. It makes him nervous. Two hours in, he is proud of himself for not losing it in the middle of another examination, except that on the way out of the room his hands are shaking so badly he almost can’t open the door.

Benny notices. Naturally. So does Ray’s father, who has a running commentary for everything. Usually he only shows up when Ray and Benny are being more intimate than two men should be in Pop’s opinion and that’s bad enough. Ray has no idea what he’s doing here _now_ , but it’s slowly wearing away what’s left of his self control.

And then he opens a door – later he can’t even tell what door it was, but he is going from one place to the next, and the smell on the other side hits him like a hammer. Blood and piss and vomit and decay, in a mix so thick he can’t breathe. And it makes sense for this place to smell like this, as he reminds himself even as he’s on the way out, blindly pushing away anyone who is in his way. This is a hospital. If any place in this city has a right to carry this smell, it’s a hospital.

Except it doesn’t smell like hospital. It smells like fear and death.

He hears someone call his name somewhere behind him and panics. No one is supposed to know he’s ‘Ray’ here. He needs to get away.

If he’s lucky they’ll just shoot him in the back and that’ll be it.

After what feels like an hour he makes it outside. People everywhere, but they don’t pay attention to him. They don’t know yet. He pulls himself together, tries to act naturally. If he can only make it to the car it’ll be okay. He just needs to get away from here.

Someone grabs him from behind and he nearly screams. Maybe he should. But it would only draw attention. Endanger anyone trying to help. He clenches his teeth and his fist and prepares himself to make a run for it, but whoever got him is stronger than him. Much stronger. Ray fumbles for his gun when he can’t break loose but it’s not there. Why isn’t it there?

A second later he is pulled around and slammed backwards against a wall.

 

-

 

At first, when Ray suddenly turns on the spot and hurries back the way he came, Benton thinks he’s just forgotten something in the waiting room. It becomes clear very quickly, however, that this is not the case.

Not quickly enough, though. It takes Benton far too long to catch up with his friend after he realises that Ray is actually in the process of running away. In the end his friend makes it almost to the car by the time Benton manages to stop him with a hand on his shoulder.

Instead of just getting Ray’s attention as intended, the gesture seems to make everything worse. Ray tries to break out of his grip and Benton instinctively tightens it without thinking. It only serves to make Ray panic even more, but by now Benton can’t let him go anymore. If Ray gets into the car and drives off in this state, he’s going to be a danger to himself and to others.

So Benton takes a firm hold of both of Ray’s shoulders and turns him around, pushing him back against the car with gentle force so he can’t get away and is forced to look at him. But there is no recognition in Ray’s eyes when they settle on Benton’s face, only wild fear and desperation.

“Ray,” Benton says, shaking him just a little. “Ray, talk to me!”

Ray doesn’t talk to him. He goes kind of limp, like he’s given up. Daring to let go for just a moment, Benton moves Ray away from the door he’s leaning against so he can open it and push his friend inside. Ray lets it happen without fight or protest. But Benton knows he can’t rely on that state lasting long, so he hurries to get around the car and behind the wheel as quickly as possible.

Just before he drives off, he leans over to Ray’s side and locks the passenger door. If he’s lucky, Ray will be too out of it to think of unlocking it should he try to throw himself out of the moving car.

He needn’t have worried. Ray does nothing of the sort. He just sits and stares straight ahead, almost frozen in his seat, and Benton just keeps driving without knowing where he’s going. He just knows he has to get Ray away from that place and all the people.

Almost an hour later, he stops the car at the shore of Lake Michigan and has to admit that his thought process and actions leading them here were not very rational. Ray is not well. They were at a hospital. The least logical thing he could possibly do was take Ray _away_ from the hospital. However, when he realized what was going on, the only thing he knew for certain was that something about the place caused this, and his first instinct was to get Ray away from whatever had hurt him.

No, when it comes to Ray, Benton’s behavior isn’t always all that rational.

The lake lies gray and vast under the equally gray sky. The water is rippled by the ever-present wind but doesn’t produce any real waves. This far outside the city, it’s almost eerily silent.

Ray is still staring out of the window, but he is no longer sitting rigidly. Instead he is leaning heavily into his seat as if too weak to remain upright on his own. Upon closer observation, Benton can make out the traces of tears on his face.

“Ray.” It seems to be the most important word in the universe. Benton reaches out, touches Ray’s shoulder, then his neck, and Ray lets him. He just nods wordlessly and then sinks forward to bury his face in his hands.

Benton lets him cry for a moment, his hand resting lightly and unsure on the shaking back. Ray is not wearing his coat. Benton was carrying it when he left the hospital and then he threw it onto the back seat when he got into the car. Now he retrieves it, drapes it over Ray’s shoulders. It’s cold inside the car. He should have thought of this before.

Ray doesn’t even seem to notice now. After another moment of hesitation, Benton pulls him over so he’s lying on his side with his head on Benton’s lap, where Benton lets him cry until he runs out of tears.

After a long time, when the sky is beginning to turn dark, Benton sighs. “Ray,” he says quietly. “You can’t go back to work.”

“I know,” Ray whispers. He knows. He’s not stupid, and he’s not irresponsible. But he has been holding on to this part of his old life so hard and so desperately that Benton can only worry.

Ray’s position cannot be at all comfortable, yet he makes no move to get up in the long pause before he says, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Come with me.” Benton hopes Ray will finally understand how much he means it. “Come to Canada with me. We will figure things out from there.”

Ray doesn’t reply. Benton waits for a long time, but Ray doesn’t say anything. In the end he shakes his head, ever so slightly, but it doesn’t even seem like he’s rejecting the idea. Maybe he’s just rejecting making a decision right now.

That’s okay. Benton understands that it’s hard. “Let’s go home,” he eventually says, running his palm over the short hair just above Ray’s ear. He actually likes how that feels and hopes Ray will still have enough hair left for him to do this a few years down the line.

And that Ray will be around for him to do it, hair or no hair.

Right now, Ray pulls away and finally sits upright. He winces, obviously sore after such a long time in such an uncomfortable position. But he doesn’t say anything. Benton is about to start the car when Ray unlocks the door and gets out.

But he doesn’t run off like Benton feared he would. He doesn’t even walk away. He just stands there, outside the car, with his arms wrapped around himself because the coat slipped from his shoulders when he sat up. Benton gathers it up before he gets out himself and once again drapes it over him.

“I honestly want you to come to Canada with me,” Benton tells him now. “I have wanted that for a long time. In fact, I have made detailed plans for it. I have been to an internet café and looked up apartments near my new stationing that would be convenient for us. And I have been working on a way to let you stay permanently despite not being a citizen. Now, I did not want to presume that you would actually change your mind about it, but I did prepare for the event that you did, just in case. For a while, though, I thought that you would stay here and I would go back and I was trying to work out a plan for us to see each other as much as possible despite not living in the same country. Now, however–”

“Fraser.”

“Yes, Ray?”

“You’re rambling.”

“Oh.” Benton does a mental inventory of his words and realises that it is true. “That happens.”

“Is there a point to it that is relevant to the situation?”

“You mean the situation where I am not going to be separated from you no matter what?”

Ray doesn’t say anything.

“Yes, there is, Ray. There are two options now. One is you and me in Canada, which, I will be honest, is the option I would prefer. The other one is you and me here.”

“How is that supposed to work?” Ray isn’t looking at him, he’s looking at the water, now almost black in the rapidly falling night. “Your leave is almost over. And so is the extension of your leave.”

“I am aware of that.”

“Are you? Because I got the impression that you’d forgotten, just now.”

“That’s why I’m going to leave the RCMP if I have to.”

Ray moves so abruptly the coat slides off his shoulders again. His uninjured hand slams onto the roof of the car and Benton doesn’t even flinch because he knows he’d never slam it anywhere else. “Don’t do that!” In the falling darkness, Ray’s expression is hard to read, but he sounds angry. “What is this? Are you trying to blackmail me now? ‘Do what I want or I’ll give up this thing I love and be miserable forever because of you’?”

“No, Ray. That would be a detestable thing to do. I am not trying to pressure you into anything, I am merely telling you how far I am willing to go for you. You are more important to me than my work. Even though my work is very, very important to me.”

Ray stares at him. He looks very pale. “And now you expect me to say the same, huh?”

“Your work is over, Ray,” Benton says gently. “At least with the police. It’s time to move on.”

“What if I don’t want to? What if I _can’t_?” Ray wraps his arms around himself again, shivering with the cold. He has to be half-frozen. “I’m a mess. You think I’m going to leave everything behind just to be a burden to you? Because that’s what it’s going to come down to.”

“I don’t think it will. But if I’m wrong, it’s still what I want.”

“God, Benny.” Ray turns away, throwing his hands up in frustration. “Why can’t you just leave? Another few days and you’d be gone. I _want_ you to be gone, dammit! I can’t be a policeman anymore, or a good brother and son, but I can save you. It’s the only thing I can do so fucking _let me_!”

“Let you?” This comes as a bit of a surprise. Benton is almost taken aback, even though maybe he should have seen this. Ray is trying to protect him, is afraid of harming him somehow. Of course. “Save me? Ray, I know what I am doing. And I know that if I leave you, I will not be any happier. In fact, I will be very unhappy.”

“And what makes you think this isn’t just Victoria all over again?” Ray flinches after saying that. This time he doesn’t try to push Benton’s buttons on purpose, that much is evident. But he keeps talking. “You either stick with me or you will feel guilty for the rest of your life, right? I’ve seen what that did to you last time.”

“It’s not the same,” Benton says with all the certainty in him. “I know it because I was there. Victoria was a dream. I knew her for days before arresting her, and the most she ever spoke to me was reciting a poem. She was an illusion, a person my guilt made up when I imagined her in prison. You are very real, Ray. I know you, and it’s _you_ I love, not some idea of you. And I don’t want to lose you. It’s that simple.”

Ray, who’s been pacing, comes to stop right in front of him. “That’s not simple at all.”

“Yes, it is. I have a decision to make. Stay with you or leave you. I made that decision. The conditions under which we will be staying together are up to you now.”

“You never asked if _I_ wanted to stay with you.”

“I assumed you’d tell me if you didn’t.” Benton picks the coat off the ground and puts it around Ray’s shoulders again, this time holding it there. “That being said, I must admit that going to Canada appears to be the better option for both of us. For one, I at least would have a job, which beats both of us being unemployed in the States. Also, I already worked out a plan to help you stay permanently whereas such a plan would need development if I were to stay here – and quickly, I might ad. And I think you would benefit from putting some distance between this city an–”

“Benny.”

“I’m rambling again?”

“You do that when you are nervous.”

“I believe you should put on the coat properly. You wouldn’t lose it so much.”

“An apartment, huh? I thought you were going for a cabin.”

“I do not have a cabin in that area, Ray.”

“You could build one.”

“That is true. My duties, however, will leave little time for construction so it will take some time to be finished and I would need a place to stay in the meantime.”

“I see. You want me to come so you have some unpaid help.”

“Ah. My cunning plan has been discovered.”

Ray takes a step forward and kisses him. As far as their spontaneous kisses go, this one is… not the worst, no, because nothing can be worse than that first one that was simply an attempt to drive Benton away, but it’s not good either. Ray isn’t kissing him because he wants to kiss him but because he wants to test his resolve. He’s using a kiss instead of words because he has no words to express his doubts any longer. Sometime in the past months or years Benton has come to know him that well.

There is no other option, really, but to answer in kind. So Benton relaxes his mouth and lets the kiss happen, and then he returns it. Ray’s assault of his lips softens and the kiss turns into something good, after all.

Ray’s good hand is on Benton’s cheek. Benton’s hands are still on Ray’s shoulders to keep the elusive coat in place. Somewhere very far away, a bang sounds through the night. It sounds like a gunshot, but Benton can tell the difference and knows it’s the sound of an engine breaking down. Ray still flinches and breaks the kiss.

“You’d better be sure about this, Benny.”

“I assure you, Ray, I am very sure.”

“I’m not.” Ray’s voice is little more than a whisper.

“Do you think things will be better if you stay?” It’s a genuine question. Benton is still prepared to stay in Chicago, even if he’d honestly rather not.

But Ray wordlessly shakes his head. He’s looking down again, so Benton reaches out and pulls him into his arms. He might even make some soothing noises, but if he does, they are carried away by the wind.

Ray is trembling with cold and maybe other things. He goes almost limp in Benton’s arm, trusting his friend – lover? – to hold him up, and he’s only skin and bones. So many things need to change. They have to start _somewhere_.

“Let’s go home,” Benton says again, but this time he doesn’t move until Ray does. And Ray takes his time, soaking in Benton’s warmth a little bit longer before he pulls away and opens the car.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Guess we have a lot to do, huh?”

 

-

 

There is indeed a lot to do, and very little time to do it. First they pick up Diefenbaker on the way home and inform him of the change of plans. Diefenbaker is okay with it. The next thing Benton does is try to warm up Ray, who is almost frozen after so much time outside without a coat and sitting still in the unheated car. He uses body heat and a lot of touching for it, but nothing more than extensive cuddling happens between them this night. If they want to go further than that (and they do), they will have to take things very slow.

They have three more days before Benton has to be at work again, and he already knows that it won’t be enough. It doesn’t help that Ray’s fever flares up again after his reckless behavior the day before; not as bad as it was but enough to be an inconvenience. Fortunately, most of the things that need doing, Benton can do on his own, with only the use of a telephone.

There is one thing he needs to go out for, and he doesn’t have a chance to do it before their last morning in Chicago. He and Ray decided to leave all the furniture in the apartment, and the personal stuff they own easily fits into three medium-size suitcases and a bag for Dief. Ray is better now. He’s not entirely over the fever and the journey home will be exhausting, but Benton is no longer worried about his sickness flaring up again and landing him in the hospital after all. That last morning in Chicago, Ray has to be at the Police Department to take care of some paperwork concerning his early retirement due to injury on the job, and Benton has a chance to go out and take care of his last bit of business in this city.

Afterwards, he stops at Willie’s place to pick up Dief. Neither of them wants to say goodbye to their friend, but Benton promises they will visit when they are in Chicago again. And they will be – Ray’s family lives here, as does Ray Kowalski. This city hasn’t seen the last of them.

He and Ray already said goodbye to Ray’s family the evening before. It was a short visit, but Benton could tell it meant a lot to Ray’s mother. She cried some, which obviously made Ray feel even worse, but Benton could not resent her for it. Later, just before they left, she took him aside for a moment and asked him to look out for her son and call them whenever there was anything wrong. Benton promised her he would, all the while regretting that he could not tell her just how much her son really means to him.

They talked about it, him and Ray, briefly. Ray nearly had a panic attack at the suggestion of filling in his family and Benton accepts his wish to postpone that reveal to a later date, even though it doesn’t feel right to him.

Mrs. Vecchio also gave them so many boxes of food that Benton suspects she believes there is no food to be found anywhere in Canada. Benton apologized for the fact that they wouldn’t be able to give back the containers anytime soon and she said it was alright as long as they brought them back at all.

So there is only one more stop for him to make, and it’s a promise he’s happy to keep. Ray Kowalski has helped him a lot getting everything organized in the few days he had and for that Benton will be forever grateful. Right now, Ray is in the middle of an important case, but he takes a moment to demand another promise, which is that Benton will call, write, and visit whenever he’s in the area. Dief gets a donut. Both the wolf and Benton leave with some sadness. There are truly some things in this city that they will miss.

When Benton gets back to the soon-to-be-empty apartment, it’s almost noon. The Ford is already parked out front, telling him Ray has come back before him, just as planned. Benton parks the car he came in right behind it and makes his way up to the fourth floor. There is a spring to his step that hasn’t been there for a long time, even though a part of him is almost sad about leaving this place behind. It might not be a nice apartment, it is cold, and most importantly he and Ray have gone through a lot of struggles while they were living here. But the place also marks the change in their relationship, and it would be naïve to believe that their struggles are over just because they are moving away.

The new apartment that Benton secured for them over the phone is going to be on the third floor. The building is relatively new. The heating is working fine and so is the elevator, so Benton will no longer have to watch Ray fight his way up the stairs on a bad day. It’s also in a quiet part of town, where they can open the windows without the noise of traffic bothering them, or the stink of exhaust and garbage.

It’s on the outskirts of town, but conveniently located. Close to Benton’s new post, but more importantly it’s close to the office of a psychiatrist that has been recommended to him. Ray doesn’t know that yet. It’s a battle for another day, but Benton hopes he can make him at least try.

When he opens the door to the apartment he called home for the last three months, he is surprised by how empty the place looks now. All the furniture is still in place except the table and chair that they took back to Turnbull’s abandoned place. The only things that have been removed are their personal belongings, and there weren’t many of those. The few books, the blankets. Fraser decided to take the futon because it has proven to be convenient. They packed some of the cooking ware and a few of the dishes, just enough to get them over the first days in Canada. With the doors of the closet closed, it’s not obvious that it’s empty.

Ray is sitting on the couch, flipping through a newspaper. He’s fully dressed in his shoes and coat and when Benton comes in he looks up and gives him a nervous and irritated glare; obviously he expected him to be back sooner.

Dief greets him briefly, then inspects the pile of suitcases and bags that is waiting beside the couch. He whines, expressing his unhappiness about the prospect of travelling and the days of confinement waiting for him.

“We’re going to miss the flight,” Ray predicts darkly. He throws down the paper, clearly intending to just leave it here, and walks over to their luggage.

“No, we won’t,” Benton assures him.

Ray just snorts. He picks up the rolled up futon and hefts it on his back, and Benton wants to tell him not to because it is heavy and Ray isn’t exactly in peak physical condition. But Ray has already picked up one of the suitcases and stands with an air of defiant determination, so in the end Benton just decides to watch out on the stairs and catch him if he should lose his balance and fall.

“Do we have everything?”

“Yes.” Just to make sure, Benton checks the bedroom again, but there is nothing left. Just the bed, now bare. He won’t miss it. There will be another bed to hold Ray in.

Ray seems eager to get going. The departure time of the flight Benton informed him they’d take is indeed dangerously close, but Benton suspects that is not the only reason. In any case, Ray obviously decided that they will have to get all the luggage downstairs in one go, which would be easy if he were healthy. As it is, Benton has to insist on carrying the other two suitcases and the large backpack himself and it gets a little awkward on the stairs. It’s the volume more than the weight, though. Incidentally, with the futon, Ray has picked the heaviest item to carry, but he bears it with tight-lipped determination.

Fortunately, their neighbors are all at work or in any case not hanging around on the stairwell. Benton said goodbye to those he happened to meet the day before; right now they don’t have time for that kind of thing, as bad as it makes him feel. Ray might collapse if he has to carry his load one minute longer than absolutely necessary.

They make it down without incident. Once out of the door, Ray aims straight for the Ford, only to stop, frozen in his tracks, when his eyes fall on the other car parked right behind it.

“Benny?” he asks, his voice a little unsteady.

“Yes, Ray?” Benton makes an effort to sound innocent, but quickly gives up and decides against playing games at this particular moment. He sets his luggage on the ground, then takes the futon off Ray’s back so he can slide an arm around his shoulders. “It’s a long way to Canada. I thought you would appreciate going there in a more appropriate vehicle.”

Ray doesn’t say anything else. He keeps standing motionless for so long Benton begins to fear he made a mistake. Maybe this car is just another reminder for Ray that his old life is over.

But when Ray finally turns to look at him, his eyes are shining. “Where did you even get that? It even has the right colour!”

“It wasn’t easy, especially on such short notice. Ray helped me.”

“But…” Ray turns his attention to the car again, shaking his head in amazement. “We’ll never make it in time if we go by car.”

“That is true.” Benton clears his throat, feeling a little sheepish. “I may have given my superiors cause to believe that I caught the flu and will be forced to delay my return to work for a few more days.”

Once again Ray turns to stare at him, and this time a grin starts to spread over his face. “You did that? Seriously? You–” He doesn’t finish whatever he wanted to say. Instead, he leans in and presses a kiss to Benton’s mouth, right there in the middle of the street in board daylight, and Benton is helpless to stop himself from grinning in return before the kiss is even over.

Afterwards, Benton loads the luggage into the trunk while Ray inspects the exterior and interior of the Buick. If there is anything about the car that is not to his satisfaction, he doesn’t say it. When he sits behind the wheel, Ray looks happy and elated and ready to go, and Benton feels happy and proud, because he did that.

It’s not going to last forever. The trip to Canada is long and it will be hard for Ray with his low-grade fever and his painful cough and headache and the broken hand. Benton will be doing most of the driving, no doubt, which will make the trip even longer because he believes in traffic laws. Dief will be grouchy because he doesn’t like long trips in general, and he will make them stop every two hours with the threat of peeing on the upholstery. No, this won’t last long. But maybe it will last long enough.

 

-

 

They cross the border just after nightfall, with Diefenbaker sighing in boredom on the backseat and Ray half-asleep in the passenger seat. Benton is not wearing his uniform, but apparently the Stetson alone is enough to get them waved through without any questions or controls. Not that they had anything to hide. Benton still appreciates it.

With that out of the way, their entry into Canada is entirely undramatic. Benton steps on the accelerator, steering the car down the road and feeling almost a little disappointed. It‘s an elating feeling to be back, true – not just for a vacation or for a short, work-related trip but coming _home_ – but all there is outside the window is the same dark that also lies over the United States, and Ray isn’t awake to share it with him.

Oh well. It’s time to find a place to spend the night anyway, and everything will be different in the morning. Lighter, in any case.  Maybe Ray will be feeling better.

“What happened to the Ford?”

“Pardon?” The question is so unexpected Benton has trouble applying the words to anything at all.

Beside him, Ray sits a little more upright. He looks out of the window and seems disappointed when he doesn’t see anything. “The Ford. Francesca was supposed to pick it up from the airport but we just left it in front of the apartment.”

“Francesca is still getting it,” Benton explains. “Or rather, I would expect that she has gotten it by now.”

Ray must be very tired. He needs a moment to come to the obvious conclusion. “Hold on. You mean she _knew_ about the Riv?”

“Yes, Ray.”

“My _sister_ Francesca?”

“Yes, Ray.”

“And she didn’t give anything away?” Out of the corner of his eye, Benton can see Ray grin. It looks very fond.

“No, Ray. I will have to send her a letter with a detailed description of your reaction, though.”

Ray doesn’t reply, and Benton can’t see his face anymore because he turned it away. It’s another few minutes before he speaks again. “So. Canada.”

“Indeed.”

“How does it feel?”

Benton can’t help a little smile of his own. “Hopeful.”

“Well, that’s nice.”

Benton smiles, but doesn’t return the question, not sure he wants to know the answer. He points out the lights of a town in the distance instead. “How do you feel about stopping for the night?”

“Sound like a good idea. You must be beat.” Ray has driven them out of Chicago but no further. It made his hand hurt worse and his concentration isn’t what it would be if he were healthy, but driving this car was obviously important to him and Benton didn’t have the heart to argue.

“I think you would be better off sleeping in a bed as well,” he offers. “How is your head?”

“My head is fine,” Ray lies. “And I don’t think I can sleep one way or another. I slept some earlier.”

“Yes, I noticed that. I was surprised.” Ray’s nap was brief, but surprisingly deep and peaceful.

“I wasn’t. I always slept better in this car anyway. Not sure why.” He laughs softly. “Back when my marriage was falling apart, when I had a fight with Ange I’d sometimes just take the car for a ride and then park it by the side of the road and sleep in the backseat.”

“That sounds reckless.”

Ray shrugs. “Worked for me.”

Apparently it works for Dief as well. He’s curled up, snoring softly and no doubt drooling onto the seat.

Ray yawns and sinks back against the door. “Hey, Benny.”

“Yes, Ray?”

Long, slender fingers brush over Benton’s where they are resting on the gear shift. “Thanks.”

Benton turns his hand until he can wrap his fingers around Ray’s. “You’re welcome.”

Ten minutes later, he has to let go, because they are entering the town and he has to slow down and shift into a lower gear. Ray’s hand remains lying limply beside Benton’s, and when Benton looks over, Ray’s eyes are closed and his breathing is very even.

When Benton sees the vacancy sign of a motel by the side of the road, he drives past it without slowing down.

It’s still a long way to go.

 

27 November 2013


End file.
